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THE TALE OF 

THE GREAT MUTINY 



THE TALE OF 

THE GREAT MUTINY 



/ 



BY 



W. H. FITCHETT, B.A., LL.D. 

AUTHOR OF "deeds THAT WON THE EMPIRE," " FIGHTS FOR 

the flag," " how england saved europe," 
"Wellington's men," etc. 



WITH PORTRAITS AND MAPS 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1901 



Printed by 

Ballantyne, Hanson &^ Co. 

Edinburgh 



^ 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. 

I. MUNGUL PANDY . . . ■ . 

II. DELHI ...... 

III. STAMPING OUT MUTINY 
IV. CAWNPORE : THE SIEGE 
V. CAWNPORE : THE MURDER GHAUT 
VI. LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAAVRENCE 
VII. LUGKNOAV AND HAVELOCK 
VIII. LUCKNOW AND SIR COLIN CAMPBELL 
IX. THE SEPOY IN THE OPEN 
X. DELHI : HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD 
XI. DELHI : THE LEAP ON THE CITY 
XII. DELHI : RETRIBUTION 
XIII. THE STORMING OF LUCKNOW 



I 

34 
65 



185 
209 

237 
263 

305 
331 
345 



INDEX 



373 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



FIELD-MARSHAL EARL ROBERTS, V.C, G.C.B. . 
LIEUTENANT GEORGE WILLOUGHBY 

SIR HENRY LAWRENCE 

MAJOR-GENERAL SIR HENRY HAVELOCK, K.C.B. 

LORD LAWRENCE 

MAJOR-GENERAL SIR HERBERT EDWARDES, K.C.B. 
BRIGADIER-GENERAL JOHN NICHOLSON . 
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR JAMES OUTHAM, BART. 



. Fi 


ontispiece 


'o face 

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5) 
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40 
148 
184- 
264 ^ 
270 -'' 
298 
350 



MAPS 



PAGE 
87 



CAWNPORE, JUNE 1857 

CAWNPORE, GENERAL WHEELER's ENTRENCHMENTS . 

LUCKNOW, 1857 

DELHI, 1857 

MAP SHOWING THE DISTRIBUTION OF TROOPS, . 

MAY I, 1857 To face page 370 



87. 
186 , 
275 



u^' 




FIELD-MARSHAL EARL ROBERTS, V.C, G.C.B. 



From ,in engraving of the portratt by W. W. OuLESS, R.A., by permission of 
Henry Graves & Co., Ltd. 



THE 

TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

CHAPTER I 

MUNGUL PANDY 

THE scene is Barrackpore, the date March 29, 
1857. It is Sunday afternoon; but on the 
dusty floor of the parade-ground a drama is being 
enacted which is suggestive of anything but Sab- 
bath peace. The quarter-guard of the 34th Native 
Infantry — tall men, erect and soldierly, and nearly 
all high-caste Brahmins — is drawn up in regular 
order. Behind it chatters and sways and eddies a 
confused mass of Sepoys, in all stages of dress and 
undress ; some armed, some unarmed ; but all fer- 
menting with excitement. Some thirty yards in 
front of the line of the 34th swaggers to and fro a 
Sepoy named Mungul Pandy. He is half-drunk 
with bhang, and wholly drunk with religious fana- 
ticism. Chin in air, loaded musket in hand, he 
struts backwards and forwards, at a sort of half- 
dance, shouting in shrill and nasal monotone, " Come 

A 



2 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY - 

out, you blackguards ! Turn out, all of yoi^j The 
English are upon us. Through biting these cart- 
ridges we shall all be made infidels ! " 

The man, in fact, is in that condition of mingled 
bhang and "nerves" which makes a Malay run 
amok; and every shout from his lips runs like a 
wave of sudden flame through the brains and along 
the nerves of the listening crowd of fellow-Sepoys, 
And as the Sepoys off duty come running up from 
every side, the crowd grows ever bigger, the excite- 
ment more intense, the tumult of chattering voices 
more passionate. A human powder magazine, in a 
word, is about to explode. 

Suddenly there appears upon the scene the Eng- 
lish adjutant. Lieutenant Baugh. A runner has 
brought the news to him as he lies in the sultry 
quiet of the Sunday afternoon in his quarters. The 
English officer is a man of decision. A saddled 
horse stands ready in the stable ; he thrusts loaded 
pistols into the holsters, buckles on his sword, and 
gallops to the scene of trouble. The sound of 
galloping hoofs turns all Sepoy eyes up the road; 
and as that red-coated figure, the symbol of military 
authority, draws near, excitement through the Sepoy 
crowd goes up uncounted degrees. They are about 
to witness a duel between revolt and discipline, 
between a mutineer and an adjutant ! 

Mungul Pandy has at least one quality of a good 
soldier. He can face peril coolly. He steadies him- 



MUNGUL PANDY 3 

self, and grows suddenly silent. He stands in the 
track of the galloping horse, musket at shoulder, 
the man himself moveless as a bronze image. And 
steadily the Englishman rides down upon him ! The 
Sepoy's musket suddenly flashes ; the galloping horse 
swerves and stumbles ; horse and man roll in the 
white dust of the road. But the horse only has 
been hit, and the adjutant struggles, dusty and 
bruised, from under the fallen beast, plucks a loaded 
pistol from the holster, and runs straight at the 
mutineer. Within ten paces of him he lifts his 
pistol and fires. There is a flash of red pistol-flame, 
a puff of white smoke, a gleam of whirling sword- 
blade. But a man who has just scrambled up, 
half-stunned, from a fallen horse, can scarcely be ex- 
pected to shine as a marksman. Baugh has missed 
his man, and in another moment is himself cut down 
by Mungul Bandy's tulwar. At this sight a Moham- 
medan Sepoy — Mungul Bandy was a Brahmin — runs 
out and catches the uplifted wrist of the victorious 
Mungul. Here is one Sepoy, at least, who cannot 
look on and see his English officer slain — least of all 
by a cow- worshipping Hindu ! 

Again the sound of running feet is heard on the 
road. It is the English sergeant-major, who has 
followed his officer, and he, too — red of face, scant 
of breath, but plucky of spirit — charges straight at 
the mutinous Bandy. But a sergeant-major, stout 
and middle-aged, who has run in uniform three- 



4 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

quarters of a mile on an Indian road, and under 
an Indian sun, is scarcely in good condition for 
engaging in a single combat with a bliang-mad- 
ened Sepoy, and he, in turn, goes down under the 
mutineer's tulwar. 

How the white teeth gleam, and the black eyes 
flash, through the crowd of excited Sepoys! The 
clamour of voices takes a new shrillness. Two 
sahibs are down before their eyes, under the 
victorious arm of one of their comrades ! The 
men who form the quarter-guard of the 34th, at 
the orders of their native officer, run forward a few 
' paces at the double, but they do not attempt to 
seize the mutineer. Their sympathies are with him. 
They halt ; they sway to and fro. The nearest 
smite with the butt-end of their muskets at the 
two wounded Englishmen, 

A cluster of British officers by this time is on the 
scene; the colonel of the 34th himself has come 
up, and naturally takes command. He orders the 
men of the quarter-guard to seize the mutineers, 
and is told by the native officer in charge that the 
men "Avill not go on," The colonel is, unhappily, not 
of the stuff of which heroes are made. He looks 
through his spectacles at Mungul Pandy, A six- 
foot Sepoy in open revolt, loaded musket in hand — 
himself loaded more dangerously by fanaticism 
strongly flavoured with bhang — while a thousand 
excited Sepoys look on trembling with angry sym- 



MUNGUL PANDY 5 

pathy, does not make a cheerful spectacle. "I felt 
it useless," says the bewildered colonel, in his official 
report after the incident, "going on any further in 
the matter. ... It would have been a useless 
sacrifice of life to order a European officer of the 
guard to seize him. ... I left the guard and re- 
ported the matter to the brigadier." Unhappy 
colonel ! He may have had his red-tape virtues, but 
he was clearly not the man to suppress a mutiny. 
The mutiny, in a word, suppressed him ! And let 
it be imagined how the spectacle of that hesitating 
colonel added a new element of wondering delight 
to the huge crowd of swaying Sepoys. 

At this moment General Hearsey, the brigadier 
in charge, rides on to the parade-ground: a red-faced, 
wrathful, hard-fighting, iron-nerved veteran, with 
two sons, of blood as warlike as their father's, riding 
behind him as aides. Hearsey, with quick military 
glance, takes in the whole scene — the mob of excited 
Sepoys, the sullen quarter-guard, the two red-coats 
lying in the road, and the victorious Mungul Pandy, 
musket in hand. As he rode up somebody called 
out, " Have a care ; his musket is loaded." To 
which the General replied, with military brevity, 
" Damn his nmsket ! " " An oath," says Trevelyan, 
" concerning which every true Englishman will make 
the customary invocation to the recording angel." 

Mungul Pandy covered the General with his 
musket. Hearsey found time to say to his son, " If 



6 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

I fall, John, rush in and put him to death somehow." 
Then, pulling up his horse on the flank of the 
quarter-guard, he plucked a pistol from his holster, 
levelled it straight at the head of the native officer, 
and curtly ordered the men to advance and seize 
the mutineer. The level pistol, no doubt, had its 
own logic ; but more effective than even the steady 
and tiny tube was the face that looked from behind 
it, with command and iron courage in every line. 
Thut masterful British will instantly asserted itself 
The loose line of the quarter-guard stiffened with 
instinctive obedience; the men stepped forward; 
and Mungul Pandy, with one unsteady glance at 
Hearsey's stern visage, turned with a quick move- 
ment the muzzle of his gun to his own breast, 
thrust his naked toe into the trigger, and fell, self- 
shot. He survived to be hanged, with due official 
ceremonies, seven days afterwards. 

It was a true instinct which, after this, taught 
the British soldier to call every mutinous Sepoy a 
"Pandy." That incident at Barrackpore is really 
the history of the Indian Mutiny in little. All its 
elements are there : the bhang-stimulated fanaticism 
of the Sepoy, with its quick contagion, runniug 
through all Sepoy ranks; the hasty rush of the 
solitary officer, gallant, but ill-fated, a single man 
trying to suppress a regiment. Here, too, is the 
colonel of the 34th, who, with a cluster of regiments 
on the point of mutiny, decides that it is " useless " 



MUNGUL PANDY 7 

to face a dangerously excited Sepoy armed with a 
musket, and retires to "report" the business to his 
brigadier. He is the type of that faikire of official 
nerve — fortunately very rare — which gave the Mutiny 
its early successes. General Hearsey, again, with his 

grim " D ■ his musket ! " supplies the example of 

that courage, swift, fierce, and iron-nerved, that in 
the end crushed the Mutiny and restored the British 
Empire in India. 

The Great Mutiny, as yet, has found neither its 
final historian, nor its sufficient poet. What other 
nation can show in its record such a cycle of heroism 
as that which lies in the history of the British in 
India between May lo, 1857 — the date of the Meerut 
outbreak, and the true beginning of the Mutiny — and 
iSTovember i, 1858, when the Queen's proclamation 
officially marked its close ? But the heroes in 
that great episode — the men of Lucknow, and Delhi, 
and Arrah, the men who marched and fought under 
Havelock, who held the Ridge at Delhi under Wilson, 
who stormed the Alumbagh under Clyde — though 
they could make history, could not write it. There 
are a hundred " Memoirs," and " Journals," and " His- 
tories " of the great revolt, but the Mutiny still waits 
for its Thucydides and its Napier. Trevelyan's " Cawn- 
pore," it is true, will hold its readers breathless with its 
fire, and movement, and graphic force ; but it deals 
with only one picturesque and dreadful episode of 
the Great Mutiny. The " History of the Mutiny," by 



8 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

Kaye and Malleson, is laborious, honest, accurate; 
but no one can pretend that it is very readable. It 
has Kinglake's diffuseness without Kinglake's literary 
charm. The work, too, is a sort of literary duet of a 
very controversial sort. Colonel Malleson, from the 
notes, continually contradicts Sir John Kaye in the 
text, and he does it with a bluntness, and a diligence, 
which have quite a humorous effect. 

Not only is the Mutiny without an historian, but 
it remains without any finally convincing analysis 
of its causes. Justin McCarthy's summary of the 
causes of the Mutiny, as given in his " History of Our 
Own Times," is a typical example of wrong-headed 
judgment. Mr. McCarthy contemplates the Mutiny 
through the lens of his own politics, and almost re- 
gards it with complacency as a mere struggle for 
Home Rule ! It was not a Mutiny, he says, like that 
at the Nore ; it Avas a revolution, like that in France 
at the end of the eighteenth century. It was "a 
national and religious war," a rising of the many 
races of India against the too oppressive Saxon. The 
native princes were in it as well as the native soldiers. 

The plain facts of the case are fatal to that theory. 
The struggle was confined to one Presidency out of 
three. Only two dynastic princes — Nana Sahib and 
the Ranee of Jhansi — joined in the outbreak. The 
people in the country districts were passive; the 
British revenue, except over the actual field of strife, 
was regularly paid. If their own trained native 



MUNGUL PANDY 9 

soldiery turned against tlie British, other natives 
thronged in thousands to their flag. A hundred 
examples might be given where native loyalty and 
valour saved the situation for the English, 

There Avere Sepoys on both sides of the entrench- 
ment at Lucknow. Counting camp followers, native 
servants, &c., there were two black faces to every white 
face under the British flag which fluttered so proudly 
over the historic Kidge at Delhi. The " protected " 
Sikh chiefs, by their fidelity, kept British authority 
from temporary collapse betwixt the Jumna and the 
Sutlej, They formed what Sir Richard Temple calls 
" a political breakwater," on which the fury of rebel- 
lious Hindustan broke in vain. The Chief of Pattiala 
employed 5000 troops in guarding the trunk road 
betwixt the Punjaub and Delhi, along which rein- 
forcements and warlike supplies were flowing to the 
British force on the Ridge. This enabled the whole 
strength of the British to be concentrated on the 
siege. The Chief of Jhind was the first native ruler 
who appeared in the field with an armed force on the 
British side, and his troops took part in the final 
assault on Delhi. Golab Singh sent from his princi- 
pality, stretching along the foot of the Himalayas, 
strong reinforcements to the British troops besieging 
Delhi. " The sight of these troops moving against 
the mutineers in the darkest hour of British fortunes 
produced," says Sir Richard Temple, " a profound 
moral effect on the Punjaub." 



lO THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

If John Lawrence liad to disband or suppress 
36,000 mutinous Sepoys in the Punjaub, he was able 
to enhst from Ghoorkas and Sikhs and the wild 
tribes on the Afghan borders more than another 
36,000 to take their places. He fed the scanty and 
gallant force which kept the British flag flying before 
Delhi with an ever-flowing stream of native soldiers 
of sufficient fidelity. At the time of the Mutiny 
there were 38,000 British soldiers in a population 
of 180,000,000. If the Mutiny had been indeed a 
" national " uprising, what chances of survival would 
the handful of British have had ? 

It is quite true that the Mutiny, in its later stages, 
drew to itself political forces, and took a political 
aspect. The Hindu Sepoy, says Herbert Edwardes, 
" having mutinied about a cartridge, had nothing to 
propose for an Empire, and fell in, of necessity, with 
the only policy which was feasible at the moment, a 
Mohammedan king of Delhi. And so, with a revived 
Mogul dynasty at its head, the Mutiny took the form 
of a struggle between the Moslem and the Christian 
for empire, and this agitated every village in which 
there was a mosque or a mollah." But the emergence 
of the Mogul dynasty in the struggle was an after- 
thought, not to say, an accident. The old king at 
Delhi, discrowned and almost forgotten, was caught 
up by the mutineers as a weapon or a flag. 

The outbreak was thus, at the begmning, a purely 
military mutiny ; but its complexion and character 



MUNGUL PANDY 11 

later on were affected by local circumstances. In 
Oude, for example, tlie Mutiny was welcomed, as it 
seemed to offer those dispossessed by the recent an- 
nexation, a chance of revenge. At Delhi it found a 
centre in the old king's palace, an inspiration in 
Mohammedan fanaticism, and a nominal leader in 
the. representative of the old Mogul dynasty. So the 
Mutiny grew into a new struggle for empire on the 
part of some of the Mohammedan princes. 

Many of the contributing causes of the Mutiny are 
clear enough. Discipline had grown perilously lax 
throughout Bengal ; and the Bengal troops were, of 
all who marched under the Company's flag, the most 
dangerous when once they got out of hand. They con- 
sisted mainly of high-caste Brahmins and Rajpoots. 
They burned with caste pride. They were of incredible 
arrogance. The regiments, too, were made up largely 
of members of the same clan, and each regiment had 
its own complete staff of native officers. Conspiracy 
was easy in such a body. Secrets were safe. Inte- 
rests and passions were common. When the British 
officers had all been slaughtered out, the regiment, as 
a fighting machine, was yet perfect. Each regiment 
was practically a unit, knit together by ties of com- 
mon blood, and speech, and faith, ruled by common 
superstitions, and swayed by common passions. 

The men had the petulance and the ignorance of 
children. They believed that the entire population 
of England consisted of 100,000 souls. When the 



12 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

first regiment of Highlanders landed, the whisper ran 
across the whole Presidency, that there were no more 
men in England, and that, in default of men, the 
women had been sent out ! Later on, says Trevelyan, 
the native mind evolved another theory to explain 
the Highlanders' kilts. They wore petticoats, it was 
whispered, as a public and visible symbol that their 
mission was to take vengeance for the murder of 
English ladies. 

Many causes combined to enervate military dis- 
cipline. There had been petty mutinies again and 
again, unavenged, or only half avenged. Mutineers 
had been petted, instead of being shot or hanged. 
Lord Dalhousie had weakened the despotic authority 
of the commanding officers, and had taught the 
Sepoy to appeal to the Government against his 
officers. 

Now the Sepoy has one Celtic quality : his loyalty 
must have a personal object. He will endure, or 
even love, a despot, but it must be a desjDot he can 
see and hear. He can be ruled ; but it must be by a 
person, not by a " system." When the commander of a 
regiment of Sepoys ceased to be a despot, the symbol 
and centre of all authority, and became only a knot in 
a line of official red tape, he lost the respect of his 
Sepoys, and the power to control them. Said Kajah 
Maun Singh, in a remarkable letter to the Talookdars 
of his province : " There used to be twenty to twenty- 
five British officers to every looo men, and these 



MUNGUL PANDY I 3 

officers were subordinate to one single man. But 
nowadays there are looo officers and looo kings 
among looo men : tlie men are officers and kings 
themselves, and when such is the case there are no 
soldiers to fight." 

Upon this mass of armed men, who had lost the 
first of soldierly habits, obedience, and who were 
fermenting with pride, fanaticism, and ignorance, 
there blew what the Hindus themselves called a 
" Devil's wind," charged with a thousand deadly 
influences. The wildest rumours ran from barracks 
to barracks. One of those mysterious and authorless 
predictions which run before, and sometimes cause, 
great events was current. Plassey was fought in 
1757; the English raj, the prediction ran, would 
last exactly a century; so 1857 must see its fall. 
Whether the prophecy was Hindu or Mohammedan 
cannot be decided ; but it had been current for a 
quarter of a century, and both Hindu and Moham- 
medan quoted it and believed it. As a matter of 
fact, the great Company did actually expire in 1857 ! 

Good authorities hold that the greased cartridges 
were something more than the occasion of the Mutiny; 
they were its supreme producing cause. The history 
of the greased cartridges may be told almost in 
a sentence. "Brown Bess" had grown obsolete; 
the new rifle, with its grooved barrel, needed a 
lubricated cartridge, and it was whispered that the 
cartridge was greased with a compound of cow's fat 



14 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

and swine's fat, charged with villainous theological 
properties. It would destroy at once the caste of 
the Hindu, and the ceremonial purity of the Mo- 
hammedan ! Sir John Lawrence declares that " the 
proximate cause of the Mutiny was the cartridge 
affair, and nothing else." Mr. Lecky says that 
" recent researches have fully proved that the real, 
as well as the ostensible, cause of the Mutiny was 
the greased cartridges." He adds, this is " a shame- 
ful and terrible fact." The Sepoys, he apparently 
holds, were right in their belief that in the grease 
that smeared the cartridges was hidden a conspiracy 
against their religion ! "If mutiny," Mr. Lecky adds, 
"was ever justifiable, no stronger justification could 
be given than that of the Sepoy troops." 

But is this accusation valid ? That the military 
authorities really designed to inflict a religious wrong 
on the Sepoys in the matter of the cartridges no one, 
of course, believes. But there was, undoubtedly, 
much of heavy-handed clumsiness in the official 
management of the business. As a matter of fact, 
however, no greased cartridges were actually issued 
to any Sepoys. Some had been sent out from Eng- 
land, for the purpose of testing them under the 
Indian climate; large numbers had been actually 
manufactured in India; but the Sepoys took the 
alarm early, and none of the guilty cartridges were 
actually issued to the men. "From first to last," 
says Kaye, "no such cartridges were ever issued to 



MUNGUL PANDY IS 

the Sepoys, save, perhaps, to a Ghoorka regiment, 
at then- own request." 

When once, however, the suspicions of the Sepoys 
were, rightly or wrongly, aroused, it was impossible 
to soothe them. The men were told that they might 
grease the cartridges themselves ; but the paper in 
which the new cartridges were wrapped had now, 
to alarmed Sepoy eyes, a suspiciously greasy look, 
and the men refused to handle it. 

The Sepoy conscience was, in truth, of very 
eccentric sensitiveness. Native hands made up the 
accused cartridges without concern; the Sepoys 
themselves used them freely — when they could get 
them — against the British after the Mutiny broke 
out. But a fanatical belief on the part of the 
Sepoys, that these particular cartridges concealed 
in their greasy folds a dark design against their 
religion, was undoubtedly the immediate occasion 
of the Great Mutiny. Yet it would be absurd to 
regard this as its single producing cause. In order 
to assert this, we must forget all the other evil 
forces at work to produce the cataclysm: the 
annexation of Oude; the denial of the sacred right 
of "adoption" to the native princes; the decay of 
discipline in the Sepoy ranks ; the loss of reverence 
for their officers by the men, &c. 

The Sepoys, it is clear, were, on many grounds, 
discontented with the conditions of their service. 
The keen, brooding, and somewhat melancholy 



1 6 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

genius of Henry Lawrence foresaw the coming 
trouble, and fastened on this as one of its causes. 
In an article written in March 1856, he says that 
the conditions of the Indian Army denied a career 
to any native soldier of genius, and this must put 
the best brains of the Sepoys in quarrel with the 
British rule. Ninety out of every hundred Sepoys, 
he said in substance, are satisfied; but the remain- 
ino- ten are discontented, some of them to a danger- 
ous degree; and the discontented ten Avere the best 
soldiers of the hundred ! But, as it happened, the 
Mutiny threw up no native soldier of genius, except, 
perhaps, Tantia Topee, who was not a Sepoy ! 

"The salt water" was undoubtedly amongst the 
minor causes which provoked the Mutiny. The 
Sepoys dreaded the sea; they believed they could 
not cross it without a fatal loss of caste, and the 
new form of military oath, which made the Sepoy 
liable for over-sea service, was believed, by the 
veterans, to extend to them, even though they had 
not taken it : and so the Sepoy imagination was 
disquieted. 

Lord Dalhousie's over- Anglicised policy, it may be 
added, was at once too liberal, and too impatient, for 
the Eastern mind, with its obstinacy of habit, its 
hatred of change, its easily-roused suspiciousness. 
As Kaye puts it, Lord Dalhousie poured his new wine 
into old bottles, with too rash a hand. "The wine 
was good wine, strong wine, wine to gladden the 



MUNGUL PANDY I 7 

heart of man;" but poured into such ancient and 
shrunken bottles too rashly, it was fatal. It was be- 
cause we were " too English," adds Kaye, that the 
great crisis arose ; and " it was only because we were 
English that, when it arose, it did not overwhelm us." 
We trod, in a word, with heavy-footed British clumsi- 
ness on the historic superstitions, the ancient habi- 
tudes of the Sepoys, and so provoked them to revolt. 
But the dour British character, which is at the root 
of British clumsiness, in the end, overbore the revolt. 

The very virtues of the British rule, thus proved its 
peril. Its cool justice, its steadfast enforcement of 
order, its tireless warfare against crime, made it hated 
of all the lawless and predatory classes. Every native 
who lived by vice, chafed under a justice which 
might be slow and passionless, but which could not 
be bribed, and in the long-run could not be escaped. 

Some, at least, of the dispossessed princes, diligently 
fanned these wild dreams and wilder suspicions 
which haunted the Sepoy mind, till it kindled into 
a flame. The Sepoys were told they had conquered 
India for the English ; why should they not now 
conquer it for themselves ? The chupatties — mys- 
terious signals, coming whence no man knew, and 
meaning, no man could tell exactly what — passed 
from village to village. Usually with the chujDatti 
ran a message — "Sub lal hojaega" ("everything will 
become red") — a Sibylline announcement, which 
might be accepted as a warning against the too 

B 



1 8 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

rapid spread of the English raj, or a grim prediction 
of universal bloodshed. Whence the chupatties 
came, or what they exactly meant, is even yet a 
matter of speculation. The one thing certain is, they 
were a storm signal, not very intelligible, perhaps, 
but highly effective. 

That there was a conspiracy throughout Bengal for 
the simultaneous revolt of all Sepoys on May 31, 
cannot be doubted, and, on the whole, it was well for 
the English raj that the impatient troopers broke out 
at Meerut before the date agreed upon. 

Sir Richard Temple, whose task it was to examine 
the ex-king of Delhi's papers after the capture of the 
city, found amongst them an immense number of 
letters and reports from leading Mohammedans — 
priests and others. These letters glowed with fana- 
tical fire. Temple declared they convinced him that 
" Mohammedan fanaticism is a volcanic agency, 
which will probably burst forth in eruptions from 
time to time." But were Christian missions any 
source of political peril to British rule in India ? On 
this point John Lawrence's opinion ought to be final. 
He drafted a special despatch on the subject, and 
Sir Richard Temple, who was then his secretary, de- 
clares he " conned over and over again every para- 
graph as it was drafted." It represented his final 
judgment on the subject. He held that " Christian 
things done in a Christian way could never be politi- 
cally dangerous in India." While scrupulously ab- 



MUNGUL PANDY 1 9 

staining from interference in the religions of the 
people, the Government, he held, " should be more 
explicit than before " — not less explicit — " in avowing 
its Christian character." 

The explanation offered by the aged king of Delhi, 
is terse, and has probably as much of truth as more 
lengthy and philosophical theories. Colonel Vibart 
relates how, after the capture of Delhi, he went to 
see the king, and found him sitting cross-legged on a 
native bedstead, rocking himself to and fro. He was 
" a small and attenuated old man, apparently between 
eighty and ninety years of age, with a long white 
beard, and almost totally blind." Some one asked 
the old king what was the real cause of the outbreak 
at Delhi. " I don't know," was the reply ; " I suppose 
my people gave themselves up to the devil ! " 

The distribution of the British forces in Bengal, in 
1857, it may be noted, made mutiny easy and safe. 
We have learned the lesson of the Mutiny to-day, 
and there are now 74,000 British troops, Avith 88 
batteries of British artillery, in India, while the 
Sepoy regiments number only 150,000, with 13 bat- 
teries of artillery. But in 1857, the British garrison 
had sunk to 38,000, while the Sepoys numbered 
200,000. Most of the artillery was in native hands. 
In Bengal itself, it might almost be said, there were 
no British troops, the bulk of them being garrisoned 
on the Afghan or Pegu frontiers. A map showing 
the distribution of troops on May i, 1857 — Sepoys in 



20 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

black dots, and British in red — is a thing to meditate 
over. Such a map is pustnled with black dots, an 
inky way stretching from Cabul to Calcutta; while 
the red points gleam faintly, and at far-stretched 
intervals. 

All the principal cities were without European 
troops. There Avere none at Delhi, none at Benares, 
none at Allahabad. In the whole province of Oude 
there was only one British battery of artillery. The 
treasuries, the arsenals, the roads of the North- West 
Provinces, might almost be said to be wholly in the 
hands of Sepoys. Betwixt Meerut and Dinapore, a 
stretch of 1200 miles, there were to be found only 
two weak British regiments. Never was a prize so 
rich held with a hand so slack and careless ! It was 
the evil fate of England, too, that when the storm 
broke, some of the most important posts were in 
the hands of men paralysed by mere routine, or in 
whom soldierly fire had been quenched by the chills 
of old age. 

Of the deeper sources of the Mutiny, John Law- 
rence held, that the great numerical preponderance 
of the Sepoys in the military forces holding India, 
was the chief. " Was it to be expected," he asked, 
"that the native soldiery, who had charge of our 
fortresses, arsenals, magazines, and treasuries, without 
adequate European control, should fail to gather ex- 
travagant ideas of their own importance ? " It was 
the sense of power that induced them to rebel. The 



MUNGUL PANDY 2 1 

balance of numbers, and. of visible strength, seemed 
to be overwhelmingly with them. 

Taken geographically, the story of the Mutiny has 
three centres, and may be covered by the tragedy 
of Cawnpore, the assault on Delhi, and the heroic 
defence and relief of Lucknow. Taken in order 
of time, it has three stages. The first stretches 
from the outbreak at Meerut in May to the end 
of September. This is the heroic stage of the 
Mutiny. No reinforcements had arrived from Eng- 
land during these months. It was the period of 
the massacres, and of the tragedy of Cawnpore. Yet 
during those months Delhi was stormed, Cawnpore 
avenged, and Havelock made his amazing march, 
punctuated Avith daily battles, for the relief of Luck- 
now. The second stage extends from October 1857, 
to March 1858, when British troops were poured 
upon the scene of action, and Colin Campbell re- 
captured Lucknow, and broke the strength of the 
revolt. The third stage extends to the close of 1858, 
and marks the final suppression of the Mutiny. 

The story, with its swift changes, its tragical suf- 
ferings, its alternation of disaster and triumph, is a 
warlike epic, and might rather be sung in dithyrambic 
strains, than told in cold and halting prose. If 
some genius could do for the Indian Mutiny what 
Napier has done for the Peninsular War, it would be 
the most kindling bit of literature in the English 
language. What a demonstration the whole story 



2 2 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

is, of the Imperial genius of the British race ! " A 
nation," to quote Hodson — himself one of the most 
brilliant actors in the great drama — "which could 
conquer a country like the Punjaub, with a Hindoo- 
stanee army, then turn the energies of the con- 
quered Sikhs to subdue the very army by which 
they were tamed ; which could fight out a position 
like Peshawur for years, in the very teeth of the 
Afghan tribes; and then, when suddenly deprived 
of the regiments which effected this, could unhesi- 
tatingly employ those very tribes to disarm and quell 
those regiments Avhen in mutiny — a nation which 
could do this, is destined indeed to rule the world ! " 
These sketches do not pretend to be a reasoned 
and adequate "history" of the Mutiny. They are, 
as their title puts it, the " Tale " of the Mutiny — a 
simple chain of picturesque incidents, and, for the 
sake of dramatic completeness, the sketches are 
grouped round the three heroic names of the Mutiny 
— Cawnpore, Lucknow, and Delhi. Only the chief 
episodes in the great drama can be dealt with in a 
space so brief, and they will be told in simple fashion 
as tales, which illustrate the soldierly daring of the 
men, and the heroic fortitude of the women, of our 
race. 

On the evening of May lo, 1857, the church bells 
were sounding their call to prayer across the parade- 
ground, and over the roofs of the cantonment at 



MUNGUL PANDY 23 

Meerut. It had been a day of fierce heat; the ah- 
had scorched Hke a white flame ; all day long fiery 
winds had blown, hot as from the throat of a seven 
times heated furnace. The tiny English colony at 
Meerut — languid women, white-faced children, and 
officers in loosest undress — panted that long Sunday 
in their houses, behind the close blinds, and under 
the lazily swinging punkahs. But the cool night 
had come, the church bells were ringing, and in the 
dusk of evening, officers and their wives were stroll- 
ing or driving towards the church. They little 
dreamed that the call of the church bells, as it rose 
and sank over the roofs of the native barracks, was, 
for many of them, the signal of doom. It sum- 
moned the native troops of Meerut to revolt ; it 
marked the beginning of the Great Mutiny. 

Yet the very last place, at which an explosion 
might have been expected, was Meerut. It was the 
one post in the north-west where the British forces 
were strongest. The Eifles were there, 1000 strong ; 
the 6th Dragoons (Carabineers), 600 strong ; together 
with a fine troop of horse artillery, and details of 
various other regiments. Not less, in a word, than 
2200 British troops, in fair, if not in first-class, fight- 
ing condition, were at the station, while the native 
regiments at Meerut, horse and foot, did not reach 
3000. It did not need a Lawrence or a Havelock at 
Meerut to make revolt impossible, or to stamp it 
instantly and fiercely out if it were attempted. A 



24 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

Stroke of very ordinary soldiership might have ac- 
comphshed this ; and in that event, the Great Mutiny 
itself might have been averted. 

The general in command at Meeriit, however, had 
neither energy nor resolution. He had drowsed and 
nodded through some fifty years of routine service, 
rising by mere seniority. He was now old, obese, in- 
dolent, and notoriously incapable. He had agreeable 
manners, and a soothing habit of ignoring disagree- 
able facts. Lord Melbourne's favourite question, 
"Why can't you leave it alone ? " represented General 
Hewitt's intellect. These are qualities dear to the 
official mind, and explain General Hewitt's rise to 
high rank, but they are not quite the gifts needed to 
suppress a mutiny. In General Hewitt's case, the 
familiar fable of an army of lions commanded by an 
ass, was translated into history once more. 

On the evening of May 5 cartridges were being 
served out for the next morning's parade, and eighty- 
five men of the 3rd Native Cavalry refused to receive 
or handle them, though they were the old familiar 
greased cartridges, not the new, in whose curve, as 
we have seen, a conspiracy to rob the Hindu of his 
caste, and the Mohammedan of his ceremonial purity, 
was vehemently suspected to exist. The men were 
tried by a court-martial of fifteen native officers — 
six of them being Mohammedans and nine Hindus — 
and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. 

At daybreak on the 9th, the whole military force 



MUNGLTL PANDY 2$ 

of the station was assembled to witness tlie military 
degradation of the men. The British, with muskets 
and cannon loaded, formed three sides of a hollow 
square ; on the fourth were drawn up the native 
regiments, sullen, agitated, yet overawed by the 
sabres of the Dragoons, the grim lines of the steady 
Rifles, and the threatening muzzles of the loaded 
cannon. The eighty-five mutineers stood in the 
centre of the square. 

One by one the men were stripped of their uni- 
form — adorned in many instances with badges and 
medals, the symbols of proved courage and of ancient 
fidelity. One by one, with steady clang of hammer, 
the fetters were riveted on the limbs of the muti- 
neers, while white faces and dark faces alike looked on. 
For a space of time, to be reckoned almost by hours, 
the monotonous beat of the hammer rang over the 
lines, steady as though frozen into atone, of the stern 
British, and over the sea of dark Sepoy faces that 
formed the fourth side of the square. In the eyes of 
these men, at least, the eighty-five manacled felons 
were martyrs. 

The parade ended ; the dishonoured eighty-five 
marched off with clank of chained feet to the local 
gaol. But that night, in the huts and round the 
camp fires of all the Sepoy regiments, the whispered 
talk was of mutiny and revenge. The very prosti- 
tutes in the native bazaars with angry scorn urged 
them to revolt. The men took fire. To wait for the 



26 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

31st, the day fixed for simultaneous mutiny through- 
out Bengal, was too sore a trial for their patience. 
The next day was Sunday ; the Sahibs would all be 
present at evening service in the church ; they would 
be unarmed. So the church bells that called the 
British officers to prayer, should call their Sepoys to 
mutiny. 

In the dusk of that historic Sabbath evening, as 
the church bells awoke, and sent their pulses of 
clangorous sound over the cantonment, the men of 
the 3rd Native Cavalry broke from their quarters, 
and in wild tumult, with brandished sabres and cries 
of " Deen ! Deen ! " galloped to the gaol, burst open 
the doors, and brought back in triumph the eighty- 
five " martyrs." The Sepoy infantry regiments, the 
1 1 th and 20th, ran to their lines, and fell into rank 
under their native officers. A British sergeant, run- 
ning with breathless speed, brought the news to 
Colonel Finnis of the nth. " For God's sake, sir," he 
said, " fly ! The men have mutinied." 

Finnis, a cool and gallant veteran, was the last of 
men to " fly." He instantly rode down to the lines. 
The other British officers gathered round him, and 
for a brief space, with orders, gesticulations, and 
appeals, they held the swaying regiments steady, 
hoping every moment to hear the sound of the 
British dragoons and artillery sweeping to the scene 
of action. On the other side of the road stood the 
20th Sepoys. The British officers there also, with 



MUNGUL PANDY 27 

entreaties and remonstrances and gestures, were 
trying to keep the men in line. For an hour, while 
the evening deepened, that strange scene, of twenty 
or thirty Englishmen keeping 2000 mutineers steady, 
lasted : and still there was no sound of rumbling guns, 
or beat of trampling hoofs, to tell of British artillery 
and sabres appearing on the scene. The general was 
asleep, or indifferent, or frightened, or helpless through 
sheer want of purpose or of brains ! 

Finnis, who saw that the 20th were on the point of 
breaking loose, left his own regiment, and rode over 
to help its officers. The dusk by this time had deep- 
ened almost into darkness. A square, soldierly figure, 
only dimly seen, Finnis drew bridle in front of the 
sullen line of the 20th, and leaned over his horse's 
neck to address the men. At that moment a fiercer 
wave of excitement ran across the regiment. The 
men began to call out in the rear ranks. Suddenly 
the muskets of the front line fell to the present, a 
dancing splutter of flame swept irregularly along the 
front, and Finnis fell, riddled with bullets. The 
Great Mutiny had begun ! 

The nth took fire at the sound of the crackling 
muskets of the 20th. They refused, indeed, to shoot 
their own ofiicers, but hustled them roughly off the 
ground. The 20th, however, by this time were 
shooting at every white face in sight. The 3rd Cav- 
alry galloped on errands of arson and murder to the 
officers' houses. Flames broke out on every side. A 



2 8 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

score of bungalows were burning. The rabble in the 
bazaar added themselves to the mutineers, and shouts 
from the mob, the long-drawn-out splutter of veno- 
mous musketry, the shrieks of flying victims, broke 
the quiet of the Sabbath evening. 

Such of the Europeans in Meerut that night as 
could make their escape to the British lines were 
safe ; but for the rest, every person of European blood 
who fell into the hands of the mutineers or of the 
bazaar rabble was slain, irrespective of age or sex. 
Brave men were hunted like rats through the burn- 
ing streets, or died, fighting for their wives and little 
ones, English women were outrat^ed and mutilated. 
Little children were impaled on Sepoy bayonets, or 
hewn to bits with tulwars. And all this within rifle- 
shot of lines where might have been gathered, mth a 
single bugle-blast, some 2200 British troops ! 

General Hewitt did, indeed, very late in the even- 
ing march his troops on to the general parade-ground, 
and deployed them into line. But the Sepoys had 
vanished ; some on errands of murder and rapine, 
the great body clattering off in disconnected groups 
along the thirty odd miles of dusty road, barred by 
two rivers, which led to Delhi. 

One trivial miscalculation robbed the outbreak of 
Avhat might well have been its most disastrous 
feature. The Sepoys calculated on finding the Rifles, 
armed only with their side-arms, in the church. But 
on that very evening, by some happy chance, the 



MUNGUL PANDY 29 

church parade was fixed for half-an-hour later than 
the previous Sunday. So the Native Cavalry gal- 
loped down to the lines of the Rifles half-an-hour too 
soon, and found their intended victims actually under 
arms ! They wheeled off promptly towards the gaol ; 
but the narrow margin of that half-hour saved the 
Rifles from surprise and slaughter. 

Hewitt had, as we have seen, in addition to the 
Rifles, a strong troop of horse artillery and 600 British 
sabres in hand. He could have pursued the muti- 
neers and cut them down ruthlessly in detail. The 
gallant oflicers of the Carabineers pleaded for an 
order to pursue, but in vain. Hewitt did not even 
send news to Delhi of the revolt ! With a regiment 
of British rifles, 1000 strong, standing in line, he did 
not so nmch as shoot down, with one fierce and 
wholesome volley, the budmashes, who were busy in 
murder and outrage among the bungalows. When 
day broke Meerut showed streets of ruins blackened 
with fire, and splashed red with the blood of murdered 
Englishmen and Englishwomen. According to the 
official report, " groups of savages were actually seen 
gloating over the mangled and mutilated remains of 
their victims." Yet Hewitt thought ho satisfied all 
the obligations of a British soldier by peacefully and 
methodically collecting the bodies of slaughtered 
Englishmen and Englishwomen. He did not shoot 
or hang a single murderer ! 

It is idle, indeed, to ask what the English at Meerut 



30 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

did on the night of the loth; it is simpler to say 
what they did not do. Hewitt did nothing that 
night ; did nothing with equal diligence the next day 
—while the Sepoys that had fled from Meerut were 
slaying at will in the streets of Delhi. He allowed 
his brigade, in a helpless fashion, to bivouac on the 
parade-ground ; then, in default of any ideas of his 
own, took somebody else's equally helpless advice, 
and led his troops back to their cantonments to pro- 
tect them ! 

General Hewitt explained afterwards that while 
he was responsible for the district, his brigadier, 
Archdale Wilson, was in command of the station. 
Wilson replied that "by the regulations, Section 
XVII.," he was under the directions of General 
Hewitt, and, if he did nothing, it was because that 
inert warrior ordered nothing to be done. Wilson, 
it seems, advised Hewitt not to attempt any pursuit, 
as it was uncertain which way the mutineers had 
gone. That any attempt might be made to dispel 
that uncertainty did not occur, apparently, to either 
of the two surprising officers in command at Meerut ! 
A battery of galloper guns outside the gates of Delhi 
might have saved that city. It might, indeed, have 
arrested the Great Mutiny. 

But all India waited, listening in vain for the 
sound of Hewitt's cannon. The divisional com- 
mander was reposing in his arm-chair at Meerut; 
his brigadier was contemplating "the regulations, 



MUNGUL PANDY 3 I 

Section XVII.," and finding there reasons for doing 
nothing, while mutiny went unwhipped at Meerut, 
and was allowed at Delhi to find a home, a fortress, 
and a crowned head ! It was rumoured, indeed, 
and believed for a moment, over half India, that 
the British in Meerut had perished to a man. How 
else could it be explained that, at a crisis so terrible, 
they had vanished so completely from human sight 
and hearing? Not till May 24 — a fortnight after 
the outbreak— did a party of Dragoons move out 
from Meerut to suppress some local plunderers in 
the neighbourhood. 

One flash of Avrathful valour, it is true, lights up 
the ignominy of this story. A native butcher was 
boasting in the bazaar at Meerut how he had killed 
the wife of the adjutant of the nth. One of the 
ofiicers of that regiment heard the story. He sud- 
denly made his appearance in the bazaar, seized the 
murderer, and brought him away a captive, holding 
a loaded pistol to his head. A drum-head court- 
martial was improvised, and the murderer was 
promptly hanged. But this represents well-nigh the 
only attempt made at Meerut during the first hours 
after the outbreak to punish the mutiny and vin- 
dicate law. 

Colonel Mackenzie, indeed, relates one other in- 
cident of a kind to supply a grim satisfaction to the 
humane imagination even at this distance of time. 
Mackenzie was a subaltern in one of the revolting 



32 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

regiments- — tlie 3rd. Bengal Light Cavalry. When 
the mutiny broke out he rode straight to the lines, 
did his best to hold the men steady, and finally had 
to ride for his life with two brother officers, Lieu- 
tenant Craigie and Lieutenant Clarke. Here is 
Colonel Mackenzie's story. The group, it must be 
remembered, were riding at a gallop. 

The telegraph lines were cut, and a slack wire, which I 
did not see, as it swung across the road, caught me full on 
the chest, and bowled me over into the dust. Over my 
prostrate body poured the whole column of our followers, 
and I well remember my feelings as I looked up at the 
shining hoofs. Fortunately I was not hurt, and regaining 
my horse, I remounted, and soon nearly overtook Craigie 
and Clarke, when I was horror-struck to see a palanquin- 
gharry — a sort of box-shaped venetian-sided carriage — 
being dragged slowly onwards by its driverless horse, 
while beside it rode a trooper of the 3rd Cavalry, plung- 
ing his sword repeatedly through the open window into 
the body of its already dead occupant — an unfortunate 
European woman. But Nemesis was upon the murderer. 
In a moment Craigie had dealt him a swinging cut across 
the back of the neck, and Clarke had run him through the 
body. The wretch fell dead, the first Sepoy victim at 
Meeiait to the sword of the avenger of blood. 

For the next few Aveeks Hewitt was, probably, the 
best execrated man in all India. We have only to 
imagine what would have happened if a Lawrence, 
instead of a Hewitt, had commanded at Meerut that 
night, to realise for how much one fool counts in 



MUNGUL PANDY 33 

human history. That Hewitt did not stamp out 
mutiny or avenge murder in Meerut was bad ; his 
most fatal blunder was, that he neither pursued the 
mutineers in their flight to Delhi, nor marched hard 
on their tracks to the help of the little British colony 
there. 

Lord Roberts, indeed, holds that pursuit would 
have been " futile," and that no action by the British 
commanders at Meerut could have saved Delhi ; 
and this is the judgment, recorded in cold blood 
nearly forty years afterwards, by one of the greatest 
of British soldiers. Had the Lord Roberts of Can- 
dahar, however, been in command himself at Meerut, 
it may be shrewdly suspected the mutineers would 
not have gone unpursued, nor Delhi unwarned ! 
Amateur judgments are not, of course, to be trusted 
in military affairs ; but to the impatient civilian 
judgment, it seems as if the massacres in Delhi, the 
long and bitter siege, the whole tragical tale of the 
Mutiny, might have been avoided if Hewitt had 
possessed one thrill of the fierce energy of Nicholson, 
or one breath of the proud courage of Havelock. 



CHAPTER II 

DELHI 

DELHI lies thirty-eigtit miles to the south-west 
of Meerut, a city seven miles in circumference, 
ancient, stately, beautiful. The sacred Jumna runs 
by it. Its grey, wide-curving girdle of crenellated 
walls, is pierced with seven gates. It is a city of 
mosques and palaces and gardens, and crowded 
native bazaars. Delhi in 1857 was of great political 
importance, if only because the last representative 
of the Grand Mogul, still bearing the title of the 
King of Delhi, resided there in semi-royal state. 
The Imperial Palace, with its crowd of nearly 1 2,000 
inmates, formed a sort of tiny royal city within Delhi 
itself, and here, if anywhere, mutiny might find a 
centre and a head. 

Moreover, the huge magazines, stored with muni- 
tions of war, made the city of the utmost military 
value to the British. Yet, by special treaty, no 
British troops were lodged in Delhi itself; there 
were none encamped even on the historic Ridge 
outside it. 

The 3rd Cavalry, heading the long flight of 

2i 



DELHI 3 5 

mutineers, reached Delhi in the early morning of 
the nth of May, They spurred across the bridge, 
slew the few casual Englishmen they met as they 
swept through the streets, galloped to the king's 
palace, and with loud shouts announced that they 
had " slain all the English at Meerut, and had come 
to fight for the faith." 

The king, old and nervous, hesitated. He had 
no reason for revolt. Ambition was dead in him. 
His estates had thriven under British administra- 
tion. His revenues had risen from a little over 
iJ"40,ooo to i^ 1 40,000. He enjoyed all that he asked 
of the universe, a lazy, sensual, opium-soaked life. 
Why should he exchange a musky and golden sloth, 
to the Indian imagination so desirable, for the dread- 
ful perils of revolt and war ? But the palace at 
Delhi was a moral plague-spot, a nest of poisonous 
insects, a vast household in which fermented every 
bestial passion to which human nature can sink. 
And discontent gave edge and fire to every other 
evil force. A spark falling into such a magazine 
might well produce an explosion. And the shouts 
of the revolted troopers from Meerut at its gates 
supplied the necessary spark. 

While the old king doubted, and hesitated, and 
scolded, the palace guards opened the gates to the 
men of the 3rd Cavalry, who instantly swept in and 
slaughtered the English officials and English ladies 
found in it. Elsewhere mutiny found many victims. 



36 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

The Delhi Bank was attacked and plundered, and the 
clerks and the manager with his family were slain. 
The office of the Delhi Gazette shared the same fate, 
the unfortunate compositors being killed in the very 
act of setting up the "copy" which told of the 
tragedy at Meerut. All Europeans found that day 
in the streets of Delhi, down to the very babies, were 
killed without pity. 

There were, as we have said, no white troops in 
Delhi. The city was held by a Sepoy garrison, the 
38th, 54th, and 74th Sepoy regiments, with a battery 
of Sepoy artillery. The British officers of these regi- 
ments, when news of the Meerut outbreak reached 
them, made no doubt but that Hewitt's artillery 
and cavalry from Meerut would follow fierce and 
fast on the heels of the mutineers. The Sepoys 
were exhorted briefly to be true to their salt, and 
the men stepped cheerfully off to close and hold the 
city gates against the mutineers. 

The chief scene of interest for the next few hours 
was the main-guard of the Cashmere Gate. This was 
a small fortified enclosure in the rear of the great 
gate itself, always held by a guard of fifty Sepoys 
under a European officer. A low verandah ran 
around the inner wall of the main-guard, inside 
which, were the quarters of the Sepoys; a ramp or 
sloping stone causeway led to the summit of the 
gate itself, on which stood a small two-roomed house, 
serving as quarters for the British officer on duty. 



DELHI 37 

From tlie main-guard, two gates opened into the city 
itself. 

The guard on that day consisted of a detachment 
of the 38th Native Infantry. They had broken into 
mutiny, and assisted with cheers and laughter at the 
spectacle of Colonel Ripley, of the 54th N.I., with 
other officers of that regiment, being hunted and 
sabred by some of the mutinous light cavalry who 
had arrived from Meerut. Two companies of the 
54th were sent hurriedly to the gate, and met the 
body of their colonel being carried out literally hacked 
to pieces. 

Colonel Yibart, one of the officers of the 54th, has 
given in his work, " The Sepoy Mutiny," a vivid 
account of the scene in the main-guard, as he en- 
tered it. In one corner lay the dead bodies of five 
British officers who had just been shot. The main- 
guard itself was crowded with Sepoys in a mood of 
sullen disloyalty. Through the gate which opened 
on the city could be seen the revolted cavalry 
troopers, in their French-grey uniforms, their swords 
wet with the blood of the British officers they had 
just slain. A cluster of terrified English ladies — ■ 
some of them widows already, though they knew 
it not — had souoflrt refusre here, and their white 
faces added a note of terror to the picture. 

Major Abbott, with 150 men of the 74th N.I., pre- 
sently marched into the main-guard ; but the hold 
of the officers on the men was of the slightest, and 



38 THE TALE OF TPIE GREAT MUTINY 

when mutiny, in the mass of Sepoys crowded into 
til© main-guard, would break out into murder, no- 
body could guess. 

Major Abbott collected the dead bodies of the 
fallen officers, put them in an open bullock-cart, 
covered them with the skirts of some ladies' dresses, 
and despatched the cart, with its tragic freight, to 
the cantonments on the Kidge. The cart found its 
way to the Flagstaff Tower on the Ridge, and was 
abandoned there ; and when, a month afterwards, 
the force under Sir Henry Barnard marched on to 
the crest the cart still stood there, with the dead 
bodies of the unfortunate officers — by - this time 
turned to skeletons — in it. 

Matters quickly came to a crisis at the Cashmere 
Gate. About four o'clock in the afternoon there 
came in quick succession the sound of guns from 
the magazine. This was followed by a deep, sullen, 
and prolonged blast that shook the very walls of the 
main-guard itself, while up into the blue sky slowly 
climbed a mighty cloud of smoke. Willoughby had 
blown up the great powder-magazine ; and the sound 
shook both the nerves and the loyalty of the Sepoys 
Avho crowded the main-guard. There was kindled 
amongst them the maddest agitation, not lessened 
by the sudden appearance of Willoughby and Forrest, 
scorched and blackened by the explosion from which 
they had in some marvellous fashion escaped. 

Brigadier Graves, from the Ridge, now summoned 



DELHI 39 

Abbott and the men of the 74th back to that post. 
After some delay they commenced their march, two 
guns being sent in advance. But the first sound of 
their marching feet acted as a match to the human 
powder-magazine. The leading files of Abbott's men 
had passed through the Cashmere Gate when the 
Sepoys of the 38th suddenly rushed at it and closed 
it, and commenced to fire on their officers. In a 
moment the main-guard was a scene of terror and 
massacre. It was filled with eddying smoke, with 
shouts, with the sound of crackling muskets, of swear- 
ing men and shrieking women. Here is Colonel 
Vibart's description of the scene : — 

The horrible truth now flashed on me — we were being 
massacred right and left, without any means of escape ! 
Scarcely knowing what I was doing, I made for the ramp 
which leads from the courtyard to the bastion above. 
Every one appeared to be doing the same. Twice I was 
knocked over as we all frantically rushed up the slope, the 
bullets whistling past us like hail, and flattening themselves 
against the parapet with a frightful hiss. To this day it 
is a perfect marvel to me how any one of us escaped being 
hit. Poor Smith and Reveley, both of the 74th, were 
killed close beside me. The latter was carrying a loaded 
gun, and, raising himself with a dying effort, he discharged 
both barrels into a knot of Sepoys, and the next moment 
expired. 

The struggling crowd of British officers and ladies 
reached the bastion and crowded into its embrasures, 



40 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

while tlie Sepoys from tlie main-guard below took 
deliberate pot-shots at them. Presently a light gun 
was brought to bear on the unhappy fugitives crouch- 
ing on the summit of the bastion. The ditch was 
twenty-five feet below, but there was no choice. One 
by one the officers jumped down. Some buckled 
their sword-belts together and lowered the ladies. 
One very stout old lady, Colonel Vibart records, 
"would neither jump down nor be lowered down; 
would do nothing but scream. Just then another 
shot from the gun crashed into the parapet ; some- 
body gave the poor woman a push, and she tumbled 
headlong into the ditch beneath." Officers and 
ladies scrambled up the almost perpendicular bank 
which forms the farther wall of the ditch, and 
escaped into the jungle beyond, and began their 
peril-haunted flight to Meerut. 

Abbott, of the 74th, had a less sensational escape. 
His men told him they had protected him as long 
as they could ; he must now fly for his life. Abbott 
resisted long, but at last said, " Very well. I'm off 
to Meerut ; but," he added, with a soldier's instinct, 
" give me the colours." And, carrying the colours 
of his regiment, he set off with one other officer on 
his melancholy walk to Meerut. 

The most heroic incident in Delhi that day was 
the defence and explosion of the great magazine. 
This was a huge building, standing some 600 j^ards 
from the Cashmere Gate, packed with munitions of 




LIEUTENANT GEORGE WILLOUGHBY, 
Bengal Artillery 



Reproduced, by kind permission of his niece. Miss WALLACE,/rci;« a photoiraph of 
an unfinished zuaier-colour drawing, taken about 1857 



DELHI 4 1 

war — cannon, ammunition, and rifles — sufficient to 
have armed half a nation, and only a handful of 
Englishmen to defend it. It was in charge of Lieu- 
tenant Willoughby, who had imder him two other 
officers (Forrest and Raynor), four conductors (Buck- 
ley, Shaw, Scully, and Crowe), and two sergeants 
(Edwards and Stewart) ; a little garrison of nine 
brave men, whose names deserve to be immortalised. 

Willoughby was a soldier of the quiet and coolly 
courageous order; his men were British soldiers of 
the ordinary stuff of which the rank and file of the 
British Army is made. Yet no ancient story or 
classic fable tells of any deed of daring and self- 
sacrifice nobler than that which this cluster of com- 
monplace Englishmen was about to perform. The 
Three Hundred who kept the pass at Thermopylae 
against the Persian swarms, the Three, who, accord- 
ing to the familiar legend, held the bridge across the 
Tiber against Lars Porsena, were not of nobler fibre 
than the Nine who blew up the great magazine at 
Delhi rather than surrender it to the mutineers. 

Willoughby closed and barricaded the gates, and 
put opposite each two six-pounders, doubly loaded 
with grape ; he placed a 24-pound howitzer so as 
to command both gates, and covered other vulner- 
able points with the fire of other guns. In all he 
had ten pieces of artillery in position — with only nine 
men to work them. He had, indeed, a score of 
native officials, and he thrust arms into their re- 



42 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

luctant hands, but knew that at the first hostile shot 
they would run. 

But the Nine could not hope to hold the maga- 
zine finally against a city in revolt. A fuse was 
accordingly run into the magazine itself, some barrels 
of powder were broken open, and their contents 
heaped on the end of the fuse. The fuse was car- 
ried into the open, and one of the party (Scully) 
stationed beside it, lighted port-fire in hand. Will- 
oughby's plan was to hold the magazine as long as 
he could work the guns. But when, as was inevit- 
able, the Avave of mutinous Sepoys swept over the 
walls, Willoughby was to give the signal by a wave 
of his hat, Scully would instantly light the fuse, and 
the masfazine — with its stores of warlike material, its 
handful of brave defenders, and its swarm of eager 
assailants — would vanish in one huge thunderclap ! 

Presently there came a formal summons in the 
name of the King of Delhi to surrender the maga- 
zine. The summons met with a grim and curt 
refusal. Now the Sepoys came in solid columns down 
the narrow streets, swung round the magazine, and 
girdled it with shouts and a tempest of bullets. The 
native defenders, at the first shot, clambered down 
the Avails and vanished, and the forlorn but gallant 
Nine were left alone. Hammers were beating fiercely 
on the gates. A score of improvised scaling-ladders 
were placed against the Avails, and in a moment the 
Sepoys were swarming up. A gate Avas burst open, 



DELHI 43 

but, as the assailants tried to rush in, a blast of grape 
swept through them. Willoughby's nine guns, each 
worked by a single gunner, poured their thunder of 
sound, and storm of shot, swiftly and steadily, on 
the swaying mass of Sepoys that blocked the gate. 

Lieutenant Forrest, who survived the perils of that 
fierce hour, has told, in cool and soldierly language, 
its story : — 

Buckley, assisted only by myself, loaded and fired in 
rapid succession the several guns above detailed, firing 
at least four rounds from each gun, and with the same 
steadiness as if standing on parade, although the enemy 
were then some hundreds in number, and kept up a hot 
fire of musketry on us within forty or fifty yards. After 
firing the last round, Buckley received a musket ball in 
his arm above the elbow ; I, at the same time, was struck 
in the left hand by two musket balls. 

When, before or since, has there been a contest 
so heroic or so hopeless? But what can Nine do 
against twice as many hundreds ? From the summit 
of the walls a deadly fire is concentrated on the hand- 
ful of gallant British. One after another drops. In 
another moment will come the rush of the bayonets. 
Willoughby looks round and sees Scully stooping 
with lighted port-fire over the fuse, and watching 
for the agreed signal. He lifts his hand. Coolly 
and swiftly Scully touches the fuse with his port- 
fire. The red spark runs along its centre ; there is 



44 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

an earth-shaking crash, as of thunder, a sky-piercing 
leap of flame. The walls of the magazine are torn 
asunder ; bodies of men and fragments of splintered 
arms fly aloft. The whole city seems to shake with 
the concussion, and a great pillar of smoke, mush- 
room-topped and huge, rises slowly in the sky. It 
is the signal to heaven and earth of how the Nine 
British, who kept the great magazine, had fulfllled 
their trust. 

Of those gallant Nine, Scully, who flred the train, 
and four others vanished, along with hundreds of 
the mutineers, in one red rain. But, somehow, 
they themselves scarcely knew how, Willoughby, 
with his two ofiicers, and Conductor Buckley found 
themselves, smoke-blackened and dazed, outside the 
magazine, and they escaped death, for the moment 
at least. 

The fugitives who escaped from the Cashmere 
Gate had some very tragical experiences. Sinking 
from fatigue and hunger, scorched by the flame- 
like heat of the sun, wading rivers, toiling through 
j ungles, hunted by villagers, they struggled on, seek- 
ing some place of refuge. Some reached Meerut, 
others Umballa, but many died. Of that much- 
enduring company of fugitives, it is recorded that 
the women often showed the highest degree of forti- 
tude and patience. Yet more than one mother had 
to lay her child, killed by mere exposure or heat, 
in a nameless jungle grave; more than one wife 



DELHI 4 5 

had to see her husband die, of bullet or swordstroke, 
at her feet. 

But the fate of these wanderers was happier 
than that of the Europeans left in the city. Some 
twenty-seven — eleven of them being children and 
eight women — took refuge in a house near the 
great mosque. They held the house for three days, 
but, having no water, suffered all the agonies of 
thirst. The Sepoys set vessels of water in front of 
the house, and bade the poor besieged give up their 
arms and they should drink. They yielded, gave up 
the two miserable guns with which they had de- 
fended themselves, and were led out. No water was 
given them. Death alone was to cool those fever- 
blackened lips. They were set in a row, the eleven 
children and sixteen men and women, and shot. 
Let tender-hearted mothers picture that scene, trans- 
acted under the white glare of the Indian sun ! 

Some fifty Europeans and Eurasians barricaded 
themselves in a strong house in the English quarter 
of the city. The house was stormed, the unhappy 
captives were dragged to the King of Delhi's palace, 
and thrust into an underground cellar, with no 
windows and only one door. For five days they 
sweltered and sickened in that black hole. Then 
they were brought out, with one huge rope gird- 
ling them — men, women, and children, a pale-faced, 
haggard, half-naked crowd, crouching under one of 
the great trees in the palace garden. About them 



46 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

gathered a brutal mob of Sepoys and Budmashes, 
amongst whom was Abool Bukr, the heir-apparent 
to the King: of Delhi. The whole of the victims 
were mm-dered, with every accompaniment of cruelty, 
and it is said that the heir-apparent himself devised 
horrible refinements of suffering. 

Less than six months afterwards Hodson, of 
Hodson's Horse, shot that princely murderer, with 
a cluster of his kinsfolk, under the walls of Delhi, 
and in the presence of some 6000 shuddering natives, 
first explaining, that they were the murderers of 
women and children. Their bodies were brought 
in a cart through the most public street of the city, 
laid side by side, under the tree and on the very 
spot where they had tortured and murdered our 
women. 

Mutiny grows swiftly. On Sunday night was fired, 
from the ranks of the 20th Sepoys, the volley that 
slew Colonel Finnis, and Avas, so to speak, the opening 
note in the long miserere of the Mutiny. At four 
o'clock on Monday afternoon the thunder of the 
great magazine, as it exploded, shook the walls of 
Delhi. Before the grey light of Tuesday morning 
broke over the royal city every member of the British 
race in it was either slain or a captive. 

When a powder-magazine is fired, the interval of 
time between the flash of the first ignited grain and 
the full-throated blast of the explosion is scarcely 
measurable. And if the cluster of keen and plotting 



DELHI 47 

brains behind tbe Great Mutiny bad carried out their 
plans as they intended, the Mutiny would have had 
exactly this bewildering suddenness of arrival. There 
is what seems ample evidence to prove that Sunday, 
May 31, was fixed for the simultaneous rising of all 
the Sepoy regiments in Bengal. A small committee 
of conspirators was at work in each regiment, elabo- 
rating the details of the Mutiny. Parties were to be 
told off in each cantonment, to murder the British 
officers and their families while in church, to seize 
the treasury, release the prisoners, and capture the 
guns. The Sepoy regiments in Delhi were to take 
possession of that great city, with its arsenal. 

The outbreak at Meerut not merely altered the 
date, it changed the character of the revolt. The 
powder-magazine exploded, so to speak, in separate 
patches, and at intervals spread over weeks. It was 
this circumstance — added to the fact that the Sepoys 
had rejected the greased cartridges, and with them 
the Enfield rifle, against which Brown Bess was at a 
fatal disadvantage — that, speaking humanly, robbed 
the Mutiny of half its terror, and helped to save the 
British Empire in India. 

But, even allowing for all this, a powder-magazine 
— although it explodes only by instalments — is a 
highly uncomfortable residence while the explosion 
is going on ; and seldom before or since, in the long 
stretch of human history, have human courage and 
fortitude been put to such a test, as in the case of the 



48 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

handful of British soldiers and civilians who held the 
North- West Provinces for England during the last 
days of May 1857. 

Sir George Campbell, who was in Simla at the 
time, has told the story of how he stood one day, 
early in June, beside the telegraph operator in Um- 
balla, and listened while the wire, to use his own 
words, "seemed to repeat the experience of Job." 
" First we heard that the whole JuUunder brigade 
had mutinied, and were in full march in our direction, 
on the way to Delhi. While that message was still 
being spoken, came another message, to tell us that 
the troops in Rajpootana had mutinied, and that 
Rohilcund was lost; following which, I heard that 
the Moradabad regiment had gone, and that my 
brother and his young wife had been obliged to fly." 

Let it be remembered that the revolted districts 
equal in area France, Austria, and Prussia put to- 
gether; in population they exceeded them. And 
over this great area, and through this huge popula- 
tion, the process described by the telegrams, to whose 
rueful syllables Sir George Campbell listened, was 
being swiftly and incessantly repeated. The British 
troops did not number 22,000 men, and they were 
scattered over a hundred military stations, and sub- 
merged in a population of 94,000,000. Let the reader 
imagine fifteen or sixteen British regiments sprinkled 
in microscopic fragments over an area so vast, and 
amongst populations so huge ! 



DELHI 49 

The Sepoy army in Bengal numbered 1 50,000 men, 
and within six weeks of the shot which killed Colonel 
Finnis at Meerut, of its 120 regiments of horse and 
foot, only twenty-five remained under the British 
flag, and not five of these could be depended upon ! 
A whole army, in a word, magnificently drilled, per- 
fectly officered, strong in cavalry, and yet more for- 
midable in guns, was in open and murderous revolt. 
Some idea of the scale and completeness of the 
Mutiny can be gathered from the single fact that 
every regiment of regular cavalry, ten regiments of 
irregular cavalry out of eighteen, and sixty-three out 
of seventy-four regiments of infantry, then on the 
strength of the Bengal army, disappeared finally and 
completely from its roster ! 

In each cantonment during the days preceding the 
revolt, the British officers on the spot were — to return 
to our figure — like men shut up in a powder- 
magazine with the train fired. There might be a 
dozen or twenty British officers with their families at 
a station held by a battery of native artillery, a 
couple of squadrons of native horse, and a regiment 
of native infantry — all plotting revolt and murder! 
Honour forbade the British to fly. To show a sign of 
mistrust or take a single visible precaution would be 
to precipitate the outbreak. Many of the old Bengal 
officers relied on their Sepoys, with a fond credulity 
that nothing could alarm, and that made them blind 
and deaf to the facts about them. " It was not," says 



50 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

Trevelyan, " till lie saw his own house in flames, and 
not till he looked down the barrels of Sepoy muskets, 
and heard Sepoy bullets whizzing round his ears, 
that an old Bengal officer could begin to believe that 
his men were not as staunch as they ought to be." 

But all officers were not so blind as this. They 
knew theh peril. They saw the tragedy coming. 
They walked day after day in front of the line of their 
men's muskets on parade, not knowing when these 
iron tubes would break into red flame and flying 
bullets. They lay down night after night, knowing 
that the Sepoys in every hut were discussing the 
exact manner and time of their murder. Yet each 
man kept an untroubled brow, and went patiently 
the round of his duty, thanking God when he had no 
wife and child at the station to fall under the tender 
mercies of the mutineers. Farquhar, of the 7th 
Light Cavalry, writing to his mother at the time, 
said, " I slept every night dressed, with my revolver 
under my pillow, a drawn sword on my bed, and a 
loaded double-barrelled gun just under my bed. We 
remained in this jolly state," he explained, "a fort- 
night." 

When the outbreak came, and the bungalows were 
in flames, and the men were shouting and firing on 
the parade-ground, it was a point of honour among 
the officers to hurry to the scene and make one last 
appeal to them, dying too often under the bullets of 
their own soldiers. The survivors then had to fly, 



DELHI 5 I 

■with tlieir women and children, and hide in the hot 
jungle or wander over the scorching plains, on which 
the white heat burns like a flame, suffering all the 
torments of thirst and weariness, of undressed 
wounds, and of wearing fever. If some great writer, 
with full knowledge and a pen of fire, could write the 
story of what was dared and suffered by Englishmen 
and Englishwomen at a hundred scattered posts 
throughout the North- West Provinces, in the early 
stages of the Mutiny, it would be one of the most 
moving and heroic tales in human records. 

Sir Joseph Fayrer tells how, early in 1857, he was 
a member of a tiger-shooting expedition into the 
Terai. It was a merry party, and included some 
famous shots and great civil officials. They had 
killed their eleventh tiger when the first news of the 
rising reached the party. "All my companions," 
says Fayrer, " except Gubbins, were victims of the 
Mutiny during the year. Thomason was murdered 
at Shah Jehanpore; Gonne in the MuUahpore dis- 
trict ; Colonel Fischer was killed by the men of his 
own regiment ; Thornhill was murdered at Seetapore ; 
Lester was shot through the neck during the siege of 
Lucknow ; Graydon was killed after the first relief of 
Lucknow." Swift-following deaths of this sort have 
to be multiplied over the whole area of the Mutiny, 
before we can realise what it cost in life. 

Fayrer, as a single example of the sort of tragedies 
which took place on every side, tells how his brother, 



52 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

who was an officer in a regiment of irregular cavalry, 
was killed. He was second in command of a detach- 
ment supposed to be of loyalty beyond suspicion. It 
bad been sent by Lawrence from Lucknow to maintain 
order in the unsettled districts. There was no sign that 
the men intended to rise. The morning bugle had gone, 
the troop was ready to start, and young Fayrer, who had 
gone out, walked to a well with his charger's bridle 
over his arm, and was drinking water from a cup. 
Suddenly one of his own troopers came up behind 
him and cut him down through the back of the neck 
with his tulwar. " The poor lad — only twenty-three 
— fell dead on the spot, gasping out the word 
' mother ' as he fell." The troopers instantly rode at 
the three other British officers of the detachment. 
One of these slew three Sepoys before he was killed 
himself; the second, ill mounted, was overtaken and 
slain; the third, a splendid rider, made a reckless 
leap over a nullah, where his pursuers dared not 
follow, and so escaped. 

Before describing the great drama at Cawnpore, or 
Lucknow, or Delhi, it is worth while to give, if only 
as hasty vignettes, some pictures of what happened 
at many of the stations scattered through Oude and 
the Punjaub. They are the opening episodes of a 
stupendous tragedy. 

According to Sir Herbert Edwardes, it was the act 
of an English boy that saved the Punjaub. A very 
youthful operator — a mere lad — named Brendish, was 



DELHI 5 3 

by some accident alone in the Delhi Telegraph 
Office. When the Mutiny broke out he had to flee 
like the rest ; but, before leaving, he wired a some- 
what incoherent message to Umballa. "We must 
leave office," it ran ; " all the bungalows are on fire, 
burning down by the Sepoys of Meerut. They came 
in this morning. . . . Nine Europeans are killed." 
That message reached Umballa, was sent on to 
Lahore, and was read there as a danger-signal so ex- 
pressive, that the authorities at once decided to dis- 
arm the native troops at that station. The cryptic 
message was then flashed on to Peshawur, and was 
there read in the same sense, and acted upon with the 
same promptitude. Brendish was one of the few who 
afterwards escaped from Delhi. 

At some of the stations, where cool heads and 
steadfast courage prevailed, the Sepoys were dis- 
armed with swiftness and decision. This was espe- 
cially the case in the Punjaub, where the cause of 
England was upheld by the kingly brain of John 
Lawrence, the swift decision of Herbert Edwardes, 
and the iron courage of Neville Chamberlain and 
of John Nicholson. 

Lord Roberts has told how, on May 12, he was 
present as scribe at a council of war held in Pesha- 
wur. Round the table sat a cluster of gallant sol- 
diers, such as might well take charge of the fortunes 
of a nation in the hour of its deadliest peril. Her- 
bert Edwardes was there, and Neville Chamberlain, 



54 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

and Nicholson. They had to consider how to hold 
the Pimjaub quiet while all Bengal was in a flame 
of mutiny. The Punjaub was a newly conquered 
province; its warlike population might well be ex- 
pected to seize the first opportunity of rising against 
its conquerors. It was held by an army of over 
80,000 troops, and of these only 15,000 were British 
— the rest, some 65,000, were almost sure to join the 
Mutiny. For every British soldier in the Punjaub, 
that is, there were four probable mutineers, while 
behind these was a warlike population, just subdued 
by the sword, and ready to rise again. 

But the cool heads that met in that council were 
equal to their task. It was resolved to disarm all 
doubtful regiments, and raise new forces in their 
stead in the Punjaub itself, and from its wild frontier 
clans. A movable column, light-footed, hard-hitting, 
was to be formed under Neville Chamberlain's com- 
mand, with which to smite at revolt whenever it 
lifted its head. So the famous Movable Column 
came into being, commanded in turn by Chamber- 
lain and by Nicholson. That column itself had to 
be purged heroically again and again to cleanse it 
from mutinous elements, till it practically came to 
consist of one field-battery, one troop of horse-artil- 
lery, and one infantry regiment, all British. Then 
it played a great part in the wild scenes of the 
Mutiny. 

Before new levies could be raised in the Punjaub, 



DELHI 5 5 

however, the English had to give some striking 
proof of decision and strength. No Indian race 
will fight for masters who do not show some faculty 
for command. The crisis came at Peshawur itself, 
towards the end of May. The Sepoys had fixed 
May 22 for rising against their officers. On the 
2ist the 64th Native Infantry was to march into 
Peshawur, and on the following morning the revolt 
was to take place. Herbert Edwardes and Nicholson, 
however, were the last men in the world to be caught 
off their guard. At 7 a.m. on the morning of the 
2 1 St, parade was held, and, as the result of some 
clever manoeuvres, the five native regiments found 
themselves confronted by a line of British muskets, 
and ordered to " pile arms." The intending muti- 
neers were reduced, almost with a gesture, to the 
condition of an unarmed mob, and that lightning- 
stroke of decision saved the Punjaub. Levies poured 
in ; new regiments rose like magic ; a loyal army 
became possible. 

Little more than a fortnight afterwards, Neville 
Chamberlain discovered a plot in the 35 th Native 
Infantry, and promptly blew two ringleaders from 
the guns, the first instance of that dramatic form 
of punishment in the Mutiny. Later, when Nichol- 
son took command of the Movable Column, he was 
compelled to disarm two native regiments, the 35th 
and the 33rd. The 33rd was on its march to join 
the column, and Nicholson conducted the business 



56 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

with so nice an adjustment of time and method that 
the 35th had been disarmed, and their muskets and 
belts packed in carts and sent off to the fort, just as 
the 33rd marched up. As it halted it found itself, 
not side by side with a regiment of accomplices, but 
in front of a long and menacing line of British 
infantry and guns, and Roberts himself rode for- 
ward with the order to its colonel to pile arms. 
" What ! disarm my regiment ? " said that astonished 
officer, who was serenely unconscious that there was 
a mutinous brain under every shako in his regi- 
ment. When the order was repeated, the old colonel 
broke into actual tears. But there were sterner wills 
and stronger brains than his in. command, and the 
33rd was, in turn, reduced to harmlessness. 

At Lahore, again, the Sepoys had an elaborate 
plot to kill their officers, overpower the European 
troops, and seize the treasury and the guns. Lahore 
was a city of 90,000 inhabitants, with a garrison of 
2500 Sepoys in the city itself. The city troops were 
to rise first, and their success was to be signalled to 
Meanmeer, the military cantonment, six miles dis- 
tant. Mutiny at Lahore was to be followed by revolt 
through all the military stations of the district, from 
the Rabee to the Sutlej. The plot, however, was dis- 
covered. General Corbett, a cool and gallant soldier, 
resolved to disarm the whole native garrison. 

On the night of May 1 2, three days before the date 
fixed for the Mutiny, a military ball was to be held. 



DELHI 5 7 

This arrangement was not changed, lest the sus- 
picions of the Sepoys should be aroused, and dancing 
was kept up till two o'clock in the morning. Then 
the officers at grey dawn hurried to the parade- 
ground, where, by instructions issued the day before, 
the whole brigade was assembled, nominally to hear 
some general orders read. These were rea,d in the 
usual fashion at the head of each regiment. Then 
some brigade manoeuvres followed, and these were so 
adroitly arranged that, at their close, the native regi- 
ments found themselves in quarter-distance column, 
with five companies of a British regiment, the Sist, 
opposite them in line, the guns being still in the rear 
of the 8 1 St. 

In a single sentence, brief and stern, the order was 
given for the native regiments to " pile arms." The 
Grenadiers of the i6th, to whom the order was first 
addressed, hesitated ; the men began to handle their 
arms; for one breathless moment it was doubtful 
whether they would obey or fight. But simultaneously 
with the words "pile arms," the 8ist had fallen back, 
coolly and swiftly, betAveen the guns, and the Sepoys, 
almost at a breath, found themselves covered by a 
battery of twelve pieces loaded with grape, the artil- 
lerymen standing in position with burning port-fires, 
whilst along the line of the 8 1 st behind ran the stern 
order, " Load," and already the click of the ramrods 
in the muskets was heard. 

The nerve of the Sepoys failed ! Sullenly they 



58 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

piled arms, and 600 English, by adroitness and 
daring, disarmed 2500 Sepoys without a shot ! What 
five minutes before had been a menace to the British 
power was made harmless. 

Montgomery, the chief civil officer at Lahore, 
divides with Corbett the honour of the brilliant 
stroke of soldiership which saved the city. Never 
was there a less heroic figure in outward appearance 
than that of Montgomery. He was short, stout, soft- 
spoken, rubicund-faced, and bore, indeed, a ludicrous 
resemblance to Mr. Pickwick as depicted by the 
humorous pencil of " Phiz." He was familiarly 
known, as a matter of fact, to all Englishinen in his 
province by the sobriquet of ■ "Pickwick." But 
nature sometimes conceals an heroic spirit within 
a very unheroic-looking body. If in outward look 
there was something sheep-like in Montgomery's 
appearance, there was a lion-like strain in his 
courage. He had only a hint of the coming storm. 
A couple of scanty telegrams brought in the news 
of the mutiny at Meerut and the seizure of Delhi. 
With quick vision Montgomery read the temper of 
the native troops at Meanmeer, and, with swifter de- 
cision than even that of Corbett, he advised that they 
should be instantly disarmed. That decision averted 
a great disaster. 

The whole story shows what is possible to clear 
judgment and resolute courage; but where these 
failed, or where some old Bengal officer retained his 



DELHI 5 9 

blind and fond credulity as to the " staiincliness " of 
his men, then great tragedies became possible. 

Thus at Futteghur, some seventy miles from Cawn- 
pore, the loth Native Infantry, with some irregular 
troops, held the cantonments. General Goldie was 
divisional commander ; Colonel Smith held command 
of the loth, and cherished a piously confident belief 
in the loyalty of his Sepoys. The civilians, with a 
shrewder insight into the state of affairs, believed 
mutiny certain, and murder highly probable, and de- 
termined to leave the station. On June 4 a little 
fleet of boats, laden with almost the entire English 
colony in the place — merchants, shopkeepers, mis- 
sionaries, with their wives and children — started 
down the river, to the huge disgust of Colonel Smith, 
who thought their departure a libel on his beloved 
Sepoys. Part of the company found refuge with a 
friendly Zemindar, while three boats, containing 
nearly seventy persons — of whom forty-nine were 
women and children — pushed on to Cawnpore. In 
Cawnpore, however, though they were in ignorance of 
the fact, Wheeler and his gallant few were already 
fightmg for life against overwhelming odds. 

News soon reached the Sepoy lines at Cawnpore 
that three boat-loads of Sahibs were on the river, and 
a rush was made for them. The poor victims had 
pulled in to the bank and were enjoying "afternoon 
tea " when the horde of mutineers burst upon them. 
Some tried to hide in the long grass, which was set 



6o THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

on fire above them. The rest, scorched, wounded, 
half-naked, with bleeding feet — mothers trying to 
shelter or carry their children — were dragged to the 
presence of Nana Sahib. The ladies and children 
were ordered to sit on the ground ; their husbands, 
with their hands tied, were arranged in careful order 
behind them. Being thus picturesquely arranged for 
easy murder, some files of the 2nd Cavalry were 
marched up to kill the whole. The process was 
lengthy, wives clinging to their husbands, mothers 
trying to shelter their little ones wdth their own 
bodies from the keen cavalry swords. Nana Sahib 
watched the whole process with the leisurely and dis- 
criminating interest of a connoisseur. 

On June 18 Colonel Smith's trusted Sepoys broke 
into open revolt at the station, whence these poor 
fugitives had fled. The little British garrison, con- 
sisting of thirty fighting men, with sixty ladies and 
children, took refusfe in a low mud fort, and held it 
for nearly three weeks. Then they fought their way 
to their boats and fled. They were fiercely pursued. 
One boat grounded, and its miserable passengers 
were summarily murdered. Death by bullets, by 
sunstroke, by drowning, pursued the rest. One boat- 
load escaped, but escaped only to reach Cawnpore, 
and to perish amid the horrors of the slaughter-house 
there. 

One survivor has left a record of that dreadful 
voyage. He was in the boat that first grounded and 



DELHI 6 1 

was boarded by the Sepoys. He describes bow the 
passengers were sbot, and how "Major Robertson, 
seeing no hope, begged the ladies to come into the 
water rather than fall into their hands. While the 
ladies were throwing themselves into the water I 
jumped into the boat, took up a loaded musket, and, 
going astern, shot a Sepoy. . . . Mr. and Mrs. Fisher 
were about twenty yards from the boat ; he had his 
child in his arms, apparently lifeless. Mrs. Fisher 
could not stand against the current ; her dress, Avhich 
acted like a sail, knocked her down, when she was 
helped up by Mr. Fisher. . . . Early the next morning 
a voice hailed us from the shore, which we recognised 
as Mr. Fisher's. He came on board, and informed 
us that his poor wife and child had been drowned in 
his arms." 

For skill, daring, and promptitude, nothing ex- 
ceeded the fashion in which the incipient mutiny at 
Multan was trampled out. At no other post were 
the conditions more perilous. The garrison consisted 
of a troop of native horse-artillery, two regiments of 
native infantry, and the ist Irregular Cavalry; the 
only English troops were 50 artillerymen in charge 
of the magazine. Here, then, were 50 British artil- 
lerymen, without guns, opposed to over 3000 Sepoys 
— horse, foot, and artillery ! 

The decisive factor in the problem was the char- 
acter of the British commander. Major Chamberlain. 
His strong will and genius for command held the ist 



62 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

Irregular Cavalry steady. They were Hindus from 
tlie neighbourliood of Delhi, with a full measure of 
the superstition and pride of caste which swept away 
other regiments. But they believed in their com- 
mander. He swayed their imaginations as with a 
touch of magic. The spell of his looks and voice, his 
imperious will, overbore the impulse to revolt. His 
men declared they would follow him to the death ! 
Chamberlain resolved to disarm the other native 
regiments, and he performed the perilous feat, not 
only with miraculous audacity, but with a mnaculous 
nicety of arrangement. 

The 2nd Punjaub Infantry and the ist Punjaub 
Cavalry Avere to arrive at the station on a given 
day. They were native troops, but could — for the 
moment at least — be trusted. The new troops came 
in at nightfall. At 4 A.M. the next morning the two 
Sepoy regiments and a troop of native artillery were 
marched out as if for an ordinary parade. They 
were suddenly halted; the Punjaub troops quietly 
marched betwixt them and their lines ; the fifty 
English gunners took their places beside the guns of 
the native artillery, and a little band of Sikh cavalry 
that could be trusted rode up to the flank of the guns. 

Then Chamberlain gave the order to the suspected 
regiments to " pile arms." One Sepoy shouted, 
" Don't give up your arms ! Fight for them ; " but 
his English adjutant instantly grasped him by the 
throat, shook him as a terrier would shake a rat, and 



DELHI 63 

flung him on the ground. The mutinous Sepoys 
hesitated ; their courage sank ; they meekly piled 
arms, were marched back weaponless to their bar- 
racks, and the station was saved. But it was a great 
feat to disarm a whole garrison with only fifty English 
gunners. The regiment of irregular cavalry was 
permanently saved by the spell of Chamberlain's 
authority, and, as a reward, is still the ist Regiment 
of Bengal Cavalry. 

Some of the revolting regiments, it is satisfactory 
to know, had very distressful experiences. They 
found that mutiny was a bad investment. Let the 
tale of the 55 th, for example, be told. The regiment 
broke into open mutiny at Mardan on May 22, fired 
on their officers, and marched off to the hills with 
the regimental colours and treasure. Its colonel, 
Spottiswoode, blew out his brains in mingled grief 
and despair when he saw his "faithful" Sepoys in 
open revolt. 

Meanwhile, the most menacing figure in all the 
great drama of the Mutiny — that of Nicholson — made 
its appearance on the track of the mutineers. Nichol- 
son overtook them on the 24th, after a ride of seventy 
miles, slew 150, captured another 150 with the stolen 
colours, and promptly executed forty of his prisoners 
by blowing them from his guns. The rest of the 
broken regiment crossed the border, were hunted 
down by the hill-tribes, fell into the hands of Moham- 
medan fanatics, were " converted " by the argument 



64 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

of whip and sword, or were sold as slaves. " One fat 
old subahdar," says Mr. Cave-Browne, " was sold for 
four annas (sixpence) " ! Mutiny, it is clear, proved a 
very bitter experience for tlie unhappy 55th! The 
legend that has grown round the wanderings of this 
broken regiment is told by Mr. Rudyard Kipling in 
his vivid story, " The Lost Legion." 



CHAPTER III 

STAMPING OUT MUTINY 

PERHAPS the most cliaracteristic story of Sepoy 
outbreak is that at Allahabad. The city stands 
at the junction of the Ganges and the Jumna, 500 
miles from Calcutta, and, with its strong fortress and 
great arsenal, was a strategic point scarcely second 
in importance to Delhi. It had a population of 
75,000, highly fanatical in temper. Its arsenal was 
one of the largest in India, having arms for 40,000 
men and great stores of artillery. Yet, with the 
exception of the magazine staff, there was not a 
British soldier in the city ! It was garrisoned by the 
6th Native Infantry, a wing of a Sikh regiment, the 
9th, a battery of native artillery, and some native 
cavalry. 

Colonel Simpson of the 6th, who was in command, 
cherished the most enthusiastic faith in his men. 
He looked on his cherished Sepoys as a regiment of 
mere dusky-skinned Sir Galahads ; each one of them 
was as faithful as Milton's Abdiel ! Some sixty 
superannuated British artillerymen, the youngest of 
them over fifty years of age, had been thrown hur- 
riedly into the fort itself as a garrison ; and Colonel 

^5 E 



66 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

Simpson strongly urged tliat his regiment should be 
taken into the fort in their place as " a proof of con- 
fidence." This would have been like putting a com- 
mittee of wolves inside the fold ! 

At evening parade on June 6, Colonel Simpson 
read to his Sepoys the formal thanks of the Gover- 
nor-General for their virtuous offer to go out and 
fight the wicked mutineers at Delhi. He added a 
glowing eulogium of their loyalty on his own ac- 
count. The Sepoys cheered, Colonel Simpson and 
his fellow-ofiicers adjourned to the mess-room, and 
no doubt discoursed with great comfort on the 
much-enduring fidelity of their men. Within four 
hours of being thanked by Lord Canning and praised 
by Colonel Simpson, the "faithful" Sepoys of the 
6th Infantry had murdered seventeen officers and a,ll 
the women and children of English blood they could 
capture, and were in full march to Delhi. 

The tale is typical. At nine o'clock a bugle call 
sounded from the lines — it was the signal for revolt. 
The men rushed to arms. The Sepoy artillerymen 
holding the bridge swung their guns round, and 
opened fire on their officers. Harward and Alex- 
ander, in command of the Native Irregular Horse, 
and both officers of great promise, leaped into theu' 
saddles, and galloped fiercely to the bridge to recap- 
ture the guns. When they gave the order to 
charge, their treacherous followers suddenly pulled 
up ; and, followed by only three troopers, the 



STAMPING OUT MUTINY 67 

officers rode at the guns. Alexander, rising in his 
stirrups for one gallant sword-stroke, was shot 
through the heart; and Harward had to gallop 
for his life. 

Simpson and his officers in the meanwhile ran to 
the parade-ground to " expostulate " with their men. 
Five officers were instantly shot down. Colonel 
Simpson was beginning to address a new series of 
compliments to his faithful Sepoys, but they turned 
their muskets upon him, and interrupted his elo- 
quence with a volley. By some miracle he escaped 
and galloped off to the fort. He had to ride past the 
mess-house, and the mess guard turned out and took 
pot shots at him as he rode. The unhappy colonel 
reached the gate of the fort with a dying horse, a 
wounded arm, and an entirely new theory of Sepoy 
loyalty. 

But was the fort itself safe ? Its garrison consisted 
of the sixty odd superannuated artillerymen, a few 
civilian volunteers, the wing of a Sikh regiment, and 
a company of the 9th Native Infantry. These men 
held the gate, and Avere, of course, only waiting to 
open it to their revolted comrades. If the Sikhs 
joined hands with them, there remained nothing but 
hopeless massacre for the British. And only five 
days before, at Benares, it must be remembered, a 
Sikh regiment had opened fire on its officers ! As a 
matter of fact, the Sikhs in the fort were effervescing 
with excitement. Mutiny was in the air. Upon 



6S THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

whom the Sikh muskets might be turned, their 
owners themselves scarcely knew. It was a crisis 
of the sort which overwhelms weak men, but gives a 
man of heroic will a supreme opportunity. And, for- 
tunately, a man with all the decision and courage 
the moment needed was on the spot. 

Lieutenant Brasyer had fought as a private in the 
ranks through the Sutlej campaigns, and won a com- 
mission by his coolness and daring. He possessed 
exactly the genius needed for commanding irregular 
soldiery. He was an athlete, a fine swordsman, a 
man of the swiftest decision and most gallant courage. 
He is not unworthy, indeed, to be ranked for leader- 
ship and personal daring with Hodson of " Hodson's 
Horse." Brasyer had first to master his Sikhs, 
trembling on the verge of revolt themselves. Archi- 
bald Forbes has described his method : " Standing 
over the magazine with a red-hot iron in his hand, 
he swore by Nanac, Kam Das, Govind, and all other 
Gooroos of the Sikhs, that if his men did not promptly 
fall in and obey his orders he would blow the regi- 
ment to the Sikh equivalent of Hades." 

Brasyer's glance and voice, his imperious will and 
daring, mastered the Sikhs, and they fell obediently 
into rank. He instantly marched them down, with 
loaded muskets, to the gate, and, with the help of the 
artillerymen with their portfires, drove out the com- 
pany of Sepoys that held it, and the fort was saved ! 
But to master Sepoys in open revolt, by Sikhs on the 



STAMPING OUT MUTINY 69 

edge of revolt, was a great feat, and shows for how 
much, at such a crisis, one clear heroic will counts. 

That night Allahabad was given up to outrage and 
murder. Only above the fort itself flew the flag of 
England, and in the fort the handful of British 
officers, determined that the great arsenal should not 
fall into the hands of mutineers, were preparing 
to copy Willoughby's desperate example at Delhi. 
Russell, of the artillery, who was in charge of the 
magazine, ran trains of powder into it, and stood 
ready to blow it up in the event of capture. 

In the city itself every European or Eurasian was 
hunted like a rat through the streets, and slain with 
every accompaniment of cruelty. Outrage, in the 
ordinary sense, was not, on the whole, a marked 
feature of the Great Mutiny. The Sepoys, that is, 
were on fire with cruelty rather than with lust. But 
their cruelty spared neither age nor sex. The wife of 
a captain, according to one story current at the time 
— and perhaps not true — was literally boiled alive in 
ghee, or melted butter. Children were tossed on 
bayonets, men roasted in the flames of their own 
bungalows ; women were mutilated and dismem- 
bered. The Sepoys plundered the Treasury, carrying 
off some ;^30o,ooo in booty. 

One detail of the Allahabad massacre peculiarly 
shocked the imagination of British soldiers wherever 
the tale was told. At the mess-table of the 9th, that 
fatal night, there sat eight fresh-faced and boyish 



70 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

cadets just out from England. They had not yet 
joined their regiments, and military life, with all its 
fun and excitement, lay in the glamour of the 
unknown before them. When the busjle ransr out on 
the parade-ground these eight unposted boy ensigns 
ran out with the other officers. They fell into the 
hands of the mutineers, and seven had their throats 
cut like sheep. The eighth, a boy of sixteen, was 
left for dead, but survived in spite of horrible wounds 
for four days, hiding himself in a ravine. On the 
fifth day he was discovered, dragged to the native 
lines, and thrust into a hut as a prisoner. 

He found there a Christian catechist, who had 
formerly been a Mohammedan, and who was being 
tortured by the Sepoys to make him renounce his 
faith. The catechist's courage had given way, but 
the gallant English lad — himself only sixteen years 
of age — urged the unhappy catechist, "Don't deny 
Christ ! Never deny Christ ! " Neill reached Alla- 
habad in time to rescue both catechist and ensign. 
But the ensign, Arthur Cheek, died of his wounds 
four days after Neill's arrival. He had joined his 
regiment just eighteen days when murdered in this 
tragical fashion by his own men. It may be imagined 
how the massacre of the " poor little griffins " moved 
the British soldier to wrath everywhere. 

For a few days mutiny and riot reigned supreme at 
Allahabad. Then, hot from Benares, there appeared 
on the scene Neill with a handful of his " Lambs," as 



STAMPING OUT MUTINY 71 

the Madras Fiisileers, with admiring irony, were 
called. " Thank God, sir," said the sentry at the gate 
of the fort, as Neill rode in ; " you'll save us yet ! " 

Neill is one of the cluster of great soldiers thrust 
into sudden fame by the crisis of the Mutiny, and is 
hardly to be judged by the standard of smaller men 
and of a tamer period. He was of Scottish blood, an 
Ayrshire man, with a vehement fighting quality, and 
a strain of iron resolve, which had come to him, 
perhaps, from a line of Covenanting ancestry. He 
was a veteran soldier, accustomed to govern wild 
clans and irregular troops, and had held high com- 
mand in the Turkish contingent in the Crimea. On 
the domestic side, he was, as many stern and rough- 
natured men are, of singular tenderness. He was 
strongly religious, too, though he borrowed his reli- 
gion rather from the Old Testament than the New. 

When the Mutiny broke out Neill found himself in 
command of the Madras Fusileers, a regiment which 
included many wild spirits in its ranks, but which, in 
fighting quality, was a warlike instrument of singular 
efficiency. Neill and his "Lambs" were summoned 
from Madras by the crisis in Bengal, and Neill's best 
qualities, as well as his worst — his fighting impulse, 
his Scottish pride of race, the natural vehemence of 
his temper, his soldierly hate of mutiny, the wrath of 
a strong man at outrages on women and children, and 
his fierce contempt for the feebleness shown by some 
of the " arm-chair colonels " of the Bengal Army — all 



72 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

threw their owner into a mood in which he was pre- 
pared to dare anything to crush the Mutiny and to 
punish the mutineers. 

The Fusileers landed on the railway wharf at Cal- 
cutta, as night fell, on May 23. The great city of 
Benares was on the verge of revolt, and Neill's 
"Lambs" were to be hurried up by express to its 
rescue. The station-master told Neill that unless he 
could get his men ashore in three minutes the train 
would start without them. But Neill was not the 
man to allow a railway time-table to stand betwixt 
him and the suppression of a mutiny. With an 
abrupt gesture, he put the station-master- in charge 
of a sergeant and a file of Fusileers. The unhappy 
official shouted for help, but in another second 
stokers, firemen, and guard were in a row against the 
station wall, with a couple of " blue-caps " in charge 
of each. At the double the Fusileers came up the 
wharf, filed into the carriages, and the train, carrying 
the left wing of the regiment, moved off to Raneegange ; 
thence the detachment was carried by bullock-carts 
to Benares. Leaving the bulk of his men to follow, 
Neill pushed on with the leading detachment to 
Benares. 

Nowhere, perhaps, did English courage shine out 
with a clearer flame than at Benares. Benares is the 
holy city of Hinduism ; it had a population of 
300,000, fanatical and turbulent in the highest 
degree. The cantonment was held by three Sepoy 



STAMPING OUT MUTINY 73 

regiments — all pledged to revolt — 150 men of a 
British, regiment, the loth, and some thirty British 
gunners, with half a battery of artillery, under the 
command of Olpherts, But the cluster of soldiers 
and civilians responsible for the city — Tucker the 
commissioner, Frederick Gubbins the judge, Lind 
the magistrate, Ponsonby the brigadier, and Olpherts 
in command of the guns — held on to their post ; by 
mere cool audacity kept the turbulent city in awe, 
and the mutinous Sepoys from breaking out; and 
sent on to other posts in greater peril than their 
own such scanty reinforcements of British troops 
as reached them. In the Commissioner, Tucker, at 
least, this heroic courage had a religious root. " The 
twenty-second chapter of 2 Samuel," he wrote to 
Lord Canning, " was their stand-by." " The Lord is 
my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer," is the 
opening verse of David's song in that chapter ; " the 
God of my rock ; in Him will I trust. He is my 
shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, 
and my refuge." 

Neill reached the city on June 3, and found him- 
self on the very edge of a tragedy. The Sepoys had 
arranged for an outbreak on the night of June 4. 
The native troops numbered over 2000 ; the British 
troops, as we have seen, consisted of 1 50 men of the 
loth, and thirty artillerymen with three guns. To 
these Neill added sixty of his " Lambs " whom he 
had brought with him. Neill put the impress of his 



74 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

vehement ■will on the brigadier, Ponsonby, in charge 
of tlie station, and at lialf-an-liour's notice it was re- 
solved to disarm the Sepoys. 

The business was ill-managed. The Sepoys com- 
menced to shoot, the Sikhs turned on their officers. 
Ponsonby, an old man, found "the sun" and the 
strain of the scene too much for him, and visibly 
broke down. He dismounted, and Neill, who had 
been grimly watching the scene, said abruptly, 
" General, I assume command." Ponsonby assented 
in silence, and Neill instantly opened on the muti- 
neers Avith grape and musketry fire, and, after a few 
minutes' furious shooting, Sikh and Sepoy fled. The 
250, that is, destroyed, in a military sense, the 2000 ! 

Having stamped out the Mutiny — or, rather, 
scattered the mutineers — Neill devoted the next two 
or three days to punishing it. The Governor- General 
telegraphed orders to push on to Allahabad, but 
Neill believed in making thorough work, and he 
wired back, "Can't move; wanted here." And for 
the next three days he kept the gallows busy, and 
hanged without pause or pity. The Sepoys had shot 
down their officers, and murdered women and chil- 
dren, and Neill was bent on showing that this was 
a performance which brought in its track swift and 
terrible punishment. " Colonel Neill's hangings " 
were, no doubt, of heroic scale, and, looked at through 
the cold perspective of forty years, wear a very black 
aspect. But Neill, rightly or wrongly, held that to 



STAMPING OUT MUTINY 75 

strike, and to strike hard, and to strike swiftly, was 
the one policy in such a crisis. 

Benares being secure, Neill pushed on across the 
seventy miles of dusty, heat-scorched road to Alla- 
habad. He started with only forty-four of his 
" Lambs," and covered the seventy miles in two night 
marches. When they reached the Ganges, almost 
every fourth man was down with sunstroke, Neill 
himself being amongst the number, and his men only 
kept him up by dashing buckets of water over his 
head and chest. The boat pushed from the bank ; 
it was found to leak at a dozen points, and began to 
sink. The "blue-caps" relanded, and their officer, 
Spurgin, called for volunteers to beat the banks of 
the river in search of another boat. 

Almost every man able to walk volunteered, and, 
in the heavy sand of the river-bank, with the 
furnace-like heat of an Indian sun setting on fire 
the very air they breathed, the Fusileers began 
their search for a boat to carry them across to 
Allahabad. More than one brave fellow fell and 
died from heat and exhaustion. But a boat was 
found, the gallant forty crossed, and marched — 
as many of them as could still keep their feet — 
a tiny but dauntless band, through the gates of 
the fort. 

Other detachments followed quickly, and Neill 
flung himself with all the fire of his Scottish blood 
into the task of restoring the British raj in the 



^6 THE TALE OF THE GHEAT MUTINY 

great city. At daybreak he opened with his guns, 
from the fort, on the suburb held by the revolted 
Sepoys, and then sallied out with his scanty force, 
and burnt it over their rebel heads. " I myself," 
he wrote to his wife, "was almost dying from com- 
plete exhaustion ; " but his fierce spirit overbore the 
fainting body that carried it. He armed a river 
steamer with a howitzer and a party of volunteer 
riflemen, and employed it as a river patrol. He 
launched the fierce Sikhs — by this time heartily 
loyal — on the villages. 

They were wild soldiers, gaunt, sinewy, and eager 
■ — the " Singh log " (" the lion people ".), as they 
called themselves. Maude has left a graphic pic- 
ture of the Sikhs who, at Allahabad, followed 
Brasyer as, with his flowing white beard, he led 
them in pursuit of the broken Sepoys, or hung 
with soldierly obedience on Neill's stern orders. 
" When no fighting was on hand," he says, " squads 
of the tall, upright, Hebraic-visaged Sikhs used to 
march into their commanding ofiicer's tent, where 
they stood at attention, in silence, with one hand 
raised at the orthodox salute. ' What do you want, 
my men ? ' was the question in Hindustani. ' May 
it please the protector of the poor, we want two 
days' leave.' ' What for V 'To get drunk, Sahib ! ' 
And their request, being considered reasonable, was 
usually granted ! " 

Neill, by the way, had to use these by no means 



STAMPING OUT MUTINY 77 

ascetic Siklis to keep his own " blue-caps " sober. 
Tiie stocks of all the merchants in the city were 
practically without owners, and the finest cham- 
pagnes and brandies were selling at 6d. per bottle. 
For a day or two it seemed probable that Neill's 
little force would be swept out of existence in 
a mere ignoble torrent of drunkenness. Neill 
threatened the whip and the bullet in vain ; and 
finally marched up the Sikhs and took peremptory 
possession of all intoxicating drinks. 

On June i8 the fighting was over, the British 
were masters both of fort and city, where, fourteen 
days before, they had been little better than prisoners 
or fugitives. Then was repeated, in yet sterner 
fashion, the retribution which had struck terror 
through Benares. The gallows in Allahabad groaned 
under its heavy and quick-following burdens. In 
his diary Neill wrote : " God grant that I may have 
acted with justice. I know I have with severity, but, 
under all the circumstances, I trust for forgiveness. 
I have done all for the good of my country, to re- 
establish its prestige and power, and to put down 
this most barbarous and inhuman insurrection." 
Then he recites cases of outrage and mutilation on 
English ladies and on little children, with details 
that still chill the natural blood with horror to 
read. 

The Sepoys, it is to be noted, when the fighting 
was over, took their penalty with a sort of com- 



78 THE TALE OF THE GEE AT MUTINY 

posed fatalism, to tlie Western imagination very 
amazing. Sir George Campbell tells tlie story of 
the execution of an old native officer, a subhadar, 
which he witnessed. " He was very cool and quiet, 
and submitted to be executed without remonstrance. 
But the rope broke, and he came down to the ground. 
He picked himself up, and it was rather a painful 
scene for the spectators. But he seemed to feel 
for their embarrassment, and thought it well to 
break the awkwardness of the situation by con- 
versation, remarking that it was a very bad rope, 
and talking of little matters of that kind till another 
rope was procured, which made an end of him ! " 

It would be easy to write, or sing, a new and more 
wonderful Odyssey made up of the valiant combats, 
the wild adventures, and the distressful wanderings 
of little groups of Englishmen and Englishwomen, 
upon whom the tempest of the Mutiny broke. 

Forbes-Mitchell, for example, tells the story of 
Robert Tucker, the judge at Euttehpore. Tucker 
was a great hunter, and also, like many Indian 
officials, an earnestly religious man, with an antique 
sense of duty. When the Mutiny broke out he 
despatched every European to Allahabad, but re- 
fused to move himself This solitary Englishman, 
in a word, was determined to defend Euttehpore 
against all comers ! Believing the native officer in 
charge of the police to be loyal, he sent a message 
to him asking him to come and make arrangements 



STAMPING OUT MUTINY 79 

for the protection of the Treasury. This " loyal " 
official sent back word that the judge Sahib need 
not trouble himself about the Treasury ; that, in 
the cool of the evening, he, with his " loyal " police, 
would come down and dismiss the dog of a judge 
himself to Hades ! 

Tucker had a hunter's armoury — rifles, smooth- 
bores, and hog spears. He loaded every barrel, bar- 
ricaded every door and window, and waited quietly, 
reading his Bible, till, when the cool breath of even- 
ing began to stir, he saw the police and the local 
budmashes, with the green banner of Islam fluttering 
over their heads, marching down to attack him. 
Tucker was offered his life on condition that he 
abandoned his Christianity. Then the fight broke 
out. For hours the musketry crackled, and was 
answered by the sharp note of Tucker's rifle. Before 
midnight the brave judge lay, riddled with bullets 
and pierced with many spear-thrusts, dead on his 
own floor. But all round his house were strewn the 
bodies of those who had fallen before his cool and 
deadly aim. 

Later on, at Kotah, a similar tragedy took place, 
the story of which is told by George Lawrence. 
Major Burton, the Resident at Kotah, with his two 
sons — one aged twenty-one, the other a lad of six- 
teen — and a single native servant, held the Residency 
for four hours against native troops with artillery, 
and a huge crowd of rioters. The Residency was at 



8o THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

last set on fire, and Major Burton proposed to 
surrender on condition tliat the lives of his sons 
were spared. The gallant lads indignantly refused 
to accept the terms. They would all die together, 
they declared. They were holding the roof of the 
Residency against their assailants, and, as Lawrence 
tells the story, "they knelt down and prayed for 
the last time, and then calmly and heroically met 
their fate." The mob by this time had obtained 
scaling-ladders. They swept over the roof, and slew 
the gallant three. Major Burton's head was cut off, 
paraded round the town, and then fired from a gun. 

One of the most surprising of these personal 
adventures was that which overtook the Deputy 
Commissioner of Delhi, Sir T. Metcalfe. Wilber- 
force, in his " Unrecorded Chapter of the Indian 
Mutiny," tells the tale, and says he heard it twice 
over from Sir T. Metcalfe's own lips — though 
Wilberforce's stories sometimes are vehemently sus- 
pected to belong to the realm of fiction rather than 
of sober history. His account of Metcalfe's adven- 
ture, however, is at least ben trovato. 

Metcalfe escaped from Delhi on horseback, hotly 
pursued by some native cavalry. His horse broke 
down, and in despair Metcalfe appealed to a friendly- 
looking native to conceal him from his pursuers. 
The man led him to a cave, told him he would 
save him if possible, and, striking his horse on the 
flank, sent it galloping down the road, while Met- 



STAMPING OUT MUTINY 8 1 

calfe crept through the black throat of the cave 
into concealment. Presently Metcalfe heard his 
pursuers ride up, fiercely question his protector, and 
finally propose to search the cave. 

On this my friend burst out laughing, and, raising his 
voice so that I must hear, he said, " Oh yes, search the 
cave. Do search it. But I'll tell you what you will find. 
You will find a great red devil in there ; he lives up at 
the end of the cave. You won't be able to see him, because 
the cave turns at the end, and the devil always stands 
just round the turn, and he has got a great long knife 
in his hand, and the moment your head appears round the 
corner he will slice it off, and then he will pull the body 
in to him and eat it. Go in ; do go in — the poor devil is 
hungry. It is three weeks since he had anything to eat, 
and then it was only a goat. He loves men, does this red 
devil ; and if you all go in he will have such a meal ! " 

Metcalfe guessed that he was intended to hear this 
speech and act upon it. The cave, a short distance 
from the entrance, turned at right angles. He stood 
with his sword uplifted just round the corner, while 
a line of dismounted cavalry, in single file, one 
daring fellow leading, came slowly up the cave. As 
soon as the leader put his head in the darkness 
round the corner, Metcalfe smote with all his 
strength. The fellow's head rolled from his body, 
and his companions, with a yell of terror, and tum- . 
bling one over another in the darkness, fled. " Did 
you see him ? " demanded Metcalfe's friend outside. 

F 



82 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

" Do go back ; he wants more than one." But the 
rebel cavahy had had enough. The men who had 
gone up the cave declared that they had actually 
seen the red fiend, and been scorched by the gleam 
of his eyes ; and, mounting their horses, they fled. 

" Why did you save my life ? " Metcalfe asked his 
protector. " Because you are a just man," was the 
reply. " How do you know that ? " asked Metcalfe. 
" You decided a case against me in your court," was 
the unexpected reply. "I and all my family had 
won the case in the inferior courts by lying, but you 
found us out, and gave judgment against us. If you 
had given the case for me I Avould not" have saved 
your life ! " 

Wilberforce tells another tale which graphically 
illustrates the wild adventures of those Avild days. 
Early one morning he was on picket duty outside 
Delhi, and in the grey dawn saw two men and a boy 
hurrying along the road from the city. They were 
evidently fugitives, and, telling his men not to fire 
on them, Wilberforce went forward to meet them. 
When the group came up the boy ran forward, threw 
his arms round Wilberforce's neck, and, with an ex- 
clamation in English, kissed him. The "boy" was 
a woman named Mrs. Leeson, the sole survivor of the 
Delhi massacre. She had been concealed for more 
than three months by a friendly native, and had at 
last escaped disguised as an Afghan boy. 

When the Mutiny broke out she, Avith some other 



STAMPING OUT MUTINY 83 

ladies and a few Englishmen, took refuge in a cellar, 
and for nearly three days maintained a desperate 
defence against the crowds attacking them. The 
hero of the defence was a Baptist missionary, a 
former shipmate of Wilberforce's, "a very tall and 
powerful man, with a bloodless face, grey eyes, a 
broad jaw, and a determined mouth." One by one 
the men holding the cellar fell. Food failed, the 
ammunition was exhausted, and at last, behind the 
bodies of the fallen, piled up as a breastwork, stood 
only the brave missionary, with nothing but his 
sword to protect the crouching women and children. 
" Stripped to the waist, behind the ghastly rampart 
of the dead, the hero stood; and for hours this 
Horatius held his own. At last he fell, shot through 
the heart, and the bloodthirsty devils poured in." 
Mrs. Leeson was covered by some of the dead bodies, 
and so escaped the doom of the other ladies, and at 
night crept out of that pit of the dead. She wan- 
dered through the dark streets, the only living 
Englishwoman in the great city, and saw, hanging 
up on the trees in the dusk, the headless trunks of 
white children and the mutilated bodies of English- 
women. By happy chance she met a pitying native, 
who concealed her until she escaped in the fashion 
described, with more or less of imagination, by 
Wilberforce. 



CHAPTER IV 

CAWNPORE : THE SIEGE 

The annals of warfare contain no episode so painful as 
the story of this siege. It moves to tears as surely as the 
pages in which the greatest of all historians tells, as only 
he can tell, the last agony of the Athenian host in Sicily. 
The sun never before looked on such a sight as a crowd of 
women and children cooped within a small space, and ex- 
posed, during twenty days and nights, to the concentrated 
fire of thousands of muskets and a score of heavy cannon. 

IN these words Sir George Trevelyan sums up the 
famous struggle round the low mud-walls of 
Wheeler's entrenchments at Cawnpore more than 
forty years ago ; a struggle in which Saxon courage 
and Hindu cruelty were exhibited in their highest 
measure, and which must always form one of the 
most heartbreaking and yet kindling traditions of 
the British race. Volumes have been written about 
Cawnpore, but Trevelyan's book remains its one 
adequate literary record. The writer has a faculty 
for resonant, not to say rhythmic prose, which recalls 
the style of his more famous uncle, Macaulay, and 
in his '• Cawnpore " his picturesque sentences are 



CAWNPORE : THE SIEGE 8 5 

flushed with a sympathy which gives them a more 
than literary grace. 

Cawnpore at the time of the Mutiny was a great 
city, famous for its workers in leather, standing on 
the banks of the sacred Ganges, 270 miles S,E. from 
Delhi, and about 700 miles from Calcutta. It was a 
military station of great importance. Its vast maga- 
zine was stored with warlike material of every sort. 
It was the seat of civil administration for a rich 
district. Bat the characteristic British policy, which 
allows the Empire to expand indefinitely, without any 
corresponding expansion of the army which acts as 
its police and defence, left this great military station 
practically in the hands of the Sepoys alone. The 
British force at Cawnpore, in May 1857, consisted of 
■ sixty men of the 84th, sixty-five Madras Fusileers, 
fewer than sixty artillerymen, and a group of invalids 
belonging to the 32nd. The Sepoy force consisted of 
three strong infantry regiments and the 2nd Native 
Cavalry — a regiment of very evil fame. 

Here, then, were all the elements of a great tragedy 
— a rich treasury and a huge arsenal, lying practically 
undefended; a strong force of Sepoys, bitter with 
mutiny; a turbulent city and crowded cantonments 
festering with crime ; and only a handful of British 
soldiers to maintain the British flag ! Had the British 
consisted merely of fighting men, though they counted 
only 300 bayonets against four regiments of splendidly 
trained Sepoys, and a hostile population of 60,000, 



86 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

their case would not have been desperate. But the 
little British garrison had under its guard a great 
company of women and children and sick folk — 
civilian households, the wives and families of the 
32nd, and many more. For every fighting man who 
levelled his musket over Wheeler's entrenchments 
during the siege, there were at least two non-com- 
batants — women, or little children, or invalids, A 
company so helpless and so great could not march ; 
it could not attack; it could only stand within its 
poor screen of mud-walls and, with the stubborn and 
quenchless courage natural to its blood, fight till it 
perished. 

General Sir Hugh Wheeler, who was in command 
at Cawnpore, was a gallant soldier, who had marched 
and fought for fifty years. But he had the fatal defect 
of being over seventy-five years of age. A little man, 
slender of build, with quick eye and erect figure, he 
carried his seventy-five years with respectable energy. 
But a man, no matter how brave, in whose veins ran the 
chill and thin blood of old age, was tragically handi- 
capped in a crisis so fierce. Wheeler, moreover, who 
had married a Hindu wife, was too weakly credulous 
about the loyalty of his Sepoys. On May 1 8, scarcely 
a fortnight before the Mutiny, he telegraphed to 
Calcutta : " The plague is stayed. All well at 
Cawnpore ! " He had been warned that Nana Sahib 
was treacherous, yet he called in his help, and put 
the Treasury in his charge for safety ! This was 




Walker & Cockerell sc. 



88 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

committing the chickens, for security, to tlie bene- 
volence and " good faith " of the fox ! Not four days 
before the outbreak Wheeler actually sent back to 
Lucknow fifty men of the 84th who had been sent to 
him as a reinforcement. There was chivalry in that 
act, but there was besotted credulity too. 

But Wheeler's most fatal mistake was in the choice 
he made of the place where the British garrison was 
to make its last stand. The Cawnpore magazine 
itself was a vast walled enclosure, covering three 
acres, with strong buildings and exhaustless store 
of guns and ammunition, with the river guarding 
one front, and a nullah acting as a ditch on another. 
Here would have been shelter for the women and the 
sick, a magnificent fighting position for the men, 
abundant water, and a great store of cannon. 

Wheeler, for reasons which nobody has ever yet 
guessed, neglected this strong post. He allowed its 
stores of cannon to be turned against himself. He 
chose, instead of this formidable and sheltered post, 
a patch of open plain six miles distant, with practi- 
cally no water supply. He threw up a slender wall 
of earth, which a musket-ball could pierce, and over 
which an active cow could jump, and he crowded 
into this the whole British colony at Cawnpore. 

" What do you call that place you are making out 
on the plain ? " asked the Nana's Prime Minister, 
Azimoolah, of a British officer. " You ought to call 
it the 'Fort of Despair.'" "No, no," answered the 



CAWNPORE : THE SIEGE 89 

Englishman, Avith the pkick of his race, "we'll call 
it the ' Fort of Victory ! ' " Nevertheless, when 
Wheeler made that evil choice of a place of defence, 
he was constructing a veritable Fort of Despair, 

Wheeler, it seems, did not occupy the magazine, 
as it was held by a Sepoy guard, and it would have 
"shown mistrust," and might have precipitated a 
conflict, if he had attempted to move into it. But 
what more expressive and public sign of " mistrust " 
could be imagined than the construction of the en- 
trenchment in the open plain ? And what could 
more fatally damage British prestige than the spec- 
tacle of the entire British community, military and 
civilian, crowding into these worthless defences ! 

If Wheeler did not occupy the magazine, he might 
have blown it up, and with that act have turned to 
smoke all the resources of the rebels. This was left 
to be done by Sepoy hands six weeks later. Mean- 
while, Wheeler left almost unlimited resources of 
guns and munitions of war in the hands of the 
mutineers — to be employed against himself! 

In the grim pause, while waiting for the out- 
break, the British garrison showed a cool and gallant 
patience. The women, children, and civilians took 
up their quarters every night within the earthworks, 
where some ten light guns were mounted. But to 
"show their confidence" in their men, and, if possible, 
still to hold them back from mutiny, the British 
officers slept with their regiments. To lead a for- 



go THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

lorn hope up the broken slope of a breach, or to 
stand in an infantry square while, with thunder of 
galloping hoofs, a dozen squadrons of cavalry charge 
fiercely down, needs courage. But it was a finer 
strain of courage still which made a British officer 
leave his wife and children to sleep behind the guns, 
standing loaded with grape, to protect them from a 
rush of mutineers, while he himself walked calmly 
down to sleep — or, at least, to feign sleep — within 
the very lines of the mutineers themselves ! 

On the night of June 4 came the outbreak. The 
men of the 2nd Cavalry rushed to their stables, 
mounted, and, with mad shouts and wild firing of 
pistols, galloped off to seize the magazine and to 
"loot" the Treasury; and as they went they burnt 
and plundered and slew. The ist Sepoys followed 
them at once ; the other two Sepoy regiments — the 
53rd and 56th — hesitated. Their officers, with en- 
treaties and orders, kept them steady till the sun 
rose, and then, unfortunately, dismissed them to 
their tents. Here they Avere quickly corrupted by 
their comrades, who had returned laden with booty 
from the plundered Treasury. 

But before they had actually broken into mutiny, 
while they were yet swaying to and fro in agitated 
groups, by some blunder a gun from Wheeler's 
entrenchments opened on the Sepoys' lines. The 
argument of the flying grape was final ! The men 
broke, and — a tumultuous mob — made for the city. 



CAWNPORE : THE SIEGE 9 I 

Even then, however, some eighty Sepoys kept their 
fidelity, and actually joined the British within their 
defences, and fought bravely side by side with them 
for nearly twenty desperate days. 

For a few wild hours murder raged through the 
streets of Cawnpore. Then the mutineers turned 
their faces towards Delhi. Had no malign influence 
arrested their march the great tragedy might have 
been escaped, and the word " Cawnpore " would not 
be to-day the most tragical cluster of syllables in 
British history. But at this point the subtle and evil 
genius of Nana Sahib interposed with dire effect. 

Nana Sahib — or, to give his proper name, Seereek 
Dhoondoo Punth — was a Hindu of low birth, who 
had been adopted by the PeishAva of Poonah, the 
last representative of a great Mahratta dynasty, a 
prince who had been dethroned, but assigned a royal 
pension by the East India Company. Nana Sahib 
on the Peishwa's death, inherited his private fortune, 
a sum computed at ^^4,000,000 sterling ; but he also 
claimed the great pension which the Peishwa en- 
joyed. The Company rejected that claim, and hence- 
forth Nana Sahib was a man comsumed with hate 
of the British name and power. He concealed that 
hate, however, beneath a smiling mask of courteous 
hospitality. His agent had seen the wasted British 
lines round Sebastopol, and reported to his master 
that the British strength was broken. Nana Sahib. 



^& 



too, who understood the Hindu character, saw that 



92 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

the Sepoy regiments in Bengal were drunk with 
arrogance, and inflamed to the verge of mere lunacy, 
with fanatical suspicions, while a British garrison 
was almost non-existent. 

Here, then, were the elements of a great outbreak, 
and Nana Sahib believed that the British raj was 
about to perish. He threw in his lot with the muti- 
neers, but he had no idea of following them to Delhi, 
and being merged in the crowd that plotted and 
wrangled in the royal palace there. He would build 
up a great power for himself round Cawnpore. He 
might make himself, he dreamed, the despot of 
Northern India. He might even, by-and-by, march 
as a conqueror down the valley of the Ganges, fight 
a new Plassey, very different from the last, and, to 
quote Trevelyan, " renew the Black Hole of Calcutta, 
under happier auspices and on a more generous 
scale, and so teach those Christian dogs what it was 
to flout a Mahratta ! " 

But, as a preliminary to all this, the great company 
of Christian people within Wheeler's lines must be 
stamped out of existence. "The wolves, with their 
mates and whelps, had been hounded into their den, 
and now or never was the time to smoke them out 
and knock on the head the whole of that formidable 
brood." So, with bribes, and promises, and threats, 
Nana brought back the Sepoys, who had begun their 
Delhi march, to Cawnpore. 

On June 6, with an odd touch of official formality, 



CAWNPORE : THE SIEGE 93 

Nana sent in notice to General Wheeler that he was 
about to attack his position. Sunday, June 7, was 
spent in hunting from their various places of conceal- 
ment in Cawnpore all the unhappy Europeans who 
lingered there. One trembling family was discovered 
lurking under a bridge, another concealed in some 
native huts. They were dragged out with shouts of 
triumph and despatched. One Englishman, who had 
taken refuge in a native house, held it against the 
Sepoys till his last cartridge was expended, then 
walked out and bade them cut his throat — a request 
promptly complied with. When the safe and de- 
lightful luxury of hunting out solitary Europeans 
was exhausted, then began the attack on the British 
entrenchments. 

The odds were tremendous ! In the centre of 
Wheeler's entrenchment stood two single-storeyed 
barracks, built of thin brickwork, with verandas, and 
one of them roofed with straw. The mud wall, Avhich 
formed the defence of the position, was four feet high, 
so thin that a rifle-ball could pierce it, with rough 
gaps made for the ten light pieces which formed the 
artillery of the garrison. On the north side of the 
entrenchment was a little triangular outwork, which 
the British called the Redan. On its left front, some 
four hundred yards distant, was a row of unfinished 
barracks, part of which was held by the British, part 
by the Sepoys, and which became the scene of the 
most bloody fighting of the siege. Behind these 



94 THE TALE OF THE GEEAT MUTINY 

slender bulwarks was gathered a company of perhaps 
a thousand souls, of whom more than half were 
women and children. 

At first the barracks gave to the non-combatants a 
brief shelter; but the 24-pounders of the Sepoys 
pierced them as though they had been built of 
cheese, and before many hours they were shattered 
into wreck, and the besieged were practically without 
any shelter, not merely from the rain of lead, but 
from the consuming heat of Indian suns and the 
heavy dews of Indian nights. 

Sometimes, indeed, the men dug holes in the earth, 
into which their wives and children might creep and 
be sheltered by a few planks from the intolerable 
glare of the sun, and the incessant flight of hostile 
bullets. Quite as commonly, however, a British 
officer or civilian, as he crouched behind the poor 
wall of earth, loaded musket in hand, saw the white 
faces of his children as they slept or moaned, in the 
ditch by his side, while the wasted figure of his wife 
bent over them. There was no privacy, or shelter, or 
rest. The supply of food quickly failed. There was 
not water enough to satisfy the little children who 
cried from thirst, or to bathe the shattered limbs of 
the wounded. The men had the fierce excitement of 
fighting ; but who shall paint the anguish of English 
ladies — wives and mothers — who could not find 
water for their children's fevered lips, or shelter them 
from sun and bullet. 



CAWNPORE : THE SIEGE 95 

The imagination lingers pitifully over those groups 
of British ladies sitting or crouching in the ditches 
under the earthworks : " Unshod, unkempt, ragged 
and squalid, haggard and emaciated, parched with 
drought and faint with hunger, they sat waiting to 
hear that they were widows. Woe was it in those 
days unto them that were with child. There were 
infants born during the terrible three weeks — infants 
with no future." 

There were two wells in the encampment ; one 
which, to quote Trevelyan, "yielded nothing then, 
which will yield nothing till the sea, too, gives up 
her dead." It was some two hundred yards from the 
rampart, and lay open to the fire of the Sepoys' 
batteries. It was turned into a sepulchre. Thither, 
night by night, the besieged carried their dead, and 
cast them into its depths with brief and whispered 
prayer ; while the guns of the Sepoys thundered 
their requiem. Within three weeks 250 English people 
were cast by English hands into that strange grave. 
The other well lay also directly under hostile fire, 
and on it the Sepoy gunners, trained by British 
science, concentrated their fire night and day. Every 
drop of water drawn from it may be said to have 
been reddened with blood. 

Over this handful of British people, faint Avith 
hunger, fevered with thirst, Avasted by sickness, half 
mad with the sun's heat, roared day and night a 
tempest of hostile shot. Never before, perhaps, Avas 



g6 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

such a fire concentrated on one poor patch of soil. 
The Sepoys could mount as many guns as they 
chose, and almost of whatever calibre they pleased. 
And they could fire, within a distance ranging from 
300 to 800 yards, from under almost shot-proof 
shelter. From roof and window of all the build- 
ings commanding the entrenchments streamed, with 
scarcely a moment's pause, showers of musketry 
bullets. At night the Sepoys crept within pistol- 
shot, and fired without cessation. Wheeler's entrench- 
ments were literally girdled with fire ; they were 
whipped, day and night, with incessant volleys. 

By the third day every window and door in the 
poor barracks which served as shelter to the sick, 
and to the women and children, had been beaten in ; 
and shell and ball ranged at will through the rooms. 
One who saw the building after the siege wrote: 
"The walls are riddled with cannon-shot like the 
cells of a honeycomb. The doors are knocked into 
shapeless openings. Of the verandas only a few 
splintered rafters remain. At some of the angles the 
walls are knocked entirely away, and large chasms 
gape blackly at you." 

Never was a position more desperate; and never 
was there one held with a valour more obstinate. 
Wheeler's men had everything that was most dear to 
them at their backs, and everything that was most 
hateful in their front ; and under these conditions 
how they fought may be imagined. In the scanty 



CAWNPORE : THE SIEGE 97 

garrison, too, were over a hundred officers of the 
regiments in mutiny, fighters of the finest quality. 
It was a corps d' elite ; a garrison of officers ! 

Indian life, it may be added, develops all that is 
proudest and most manly in the British character. 
The Englishman there feels that he is a member of 
an imperial and conquering race. To rule men is his 
daily business. To hunt the fiercest game in the 
world is his amusement. The men who knelt be- 
hind Wheeler's mud walls, had faced tigers in the 
jungle, had speared the wild boar in the plains, had 
heard the scream of a charging elephant. They were 
steady of nerve, quick of eye, deadly of aim, proud 
of their blood and race. They were standing at bay 
over their wives and little ones, playing a game in' 
which the stake was a thousand British lives. And 
never before, or since, perhaps, was more gallant 
fighting done than behind Wheeler's entrenchments. 

The natural leaders of the garrison emerged in 
such a crisis, and their names ought to awaken to- 
day in British ears emotions of pride as lofty as that 
which Greeks knew when, in the rolling and sonorous 
cadences of Homer's great epic, they heard the names 
of the heroes who fought and died round classic 
Troy. One of the most heroic figures in the siege 
is that of Captain Moore, of the 32nd, in charge of 
the cluster of invalids belonging to that regiment in 
Cawnpore. Moore was an Irishman, though with 
the fan- hair and blue eyes proper to Saxon blood. 

G 



9 8 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

To say that lie was fearless is a very inadequate 
description of his temper. He delighted in the 
rapture and glow of battle. His courage had in it 
a certain cool and smiling quality that made flurry 
or anxiety impossible. Moore, in fact, carried about 
with him a sort of radiance, so that, as Trevelyan 
puts it, " wherever he had passed he left men some- 
thing more courageous, and women something less 
unhappy." This fair-haired Irishman was a born 
king of men, of unfailing resource and " dare-devil " 
courage. He was wounded early in the siege, and 
carried his arm in a sling, but he walked to and fro 
calmly amid a tempest of bullets, and the men would 
follow his cheerful leading against any odds. 

The tiny little Redan on the north face of the 
entrenchment was held by Major Vibart, of the 2nd 
Cavalry. A dreadful cross-fire searched and raked 
this little triangle of earth, and the handful of heroes 
that held it had to be renewed again and again. But 
the Redan kept up its splutter of answering fire day 
and night for three weeks, and Vibart himself sur- 
vived the siege, to perish under Sepoy bullets on the 
river. Ashe was a young artillery officer of great 
promise; he commanded a battery of three guns 
at the north-east corner of the entrenchments, and 
seldom were guns better aimed and better fought. 
Ashe had first to invent his gunners, and next to 
improvise his shot, firing 6-pound balls, for example, 
from a 9-pound muzzle. But his cool science and 



CAWNPORE : THE SIEGE 99 

sleepless activity made his battery the terror of the 
Sepoys. 

Delafosse, of the 53rcl, one of the four men who 
actually survived the siege, was an officer as daring 
and almost as skilled as Ashe. He had charge of 
three 9-pounder guns at the south-east angle. On 
one occasion the carriage of a gun in his battery took 
fire, and the wood, made as inflammable as tinder by 
the fierce Indian sun, flamed and crackled. There 
was powder — and the peril of explosion — on every 
side. The Sepoys, noting the dancing flame, turned 
all their guns on the spot. Delafosse crawled beneath 
the burning carriage, turned on his back, and with 
his naked hands pulled down the red splinters, and 
scattered earth on the flames, fighting them in this 
desperate fashion till two soldiers ran up to his help, 
and the fire was put out. 

Perhaps the most obstinate and bloody fighting 
during the siege took place in the line of unfinished 
barracks which crossed the S.W. angle of the entrench- 
ments. The Sepoys held the northern half of this 
line of buildings. Of the three buildings to the south 
— which completely commanded the entrenchment — 
what was called " No. 4," was held by a party of 
amateur soldiers — civil engineers employed on the 
East Indian railroads. There were a dozen of them, 
young fellows more familiar with theodolites than 
with rifles ; but a cluster of English Lifeguards could 
not have fought with cooler bravery. And the civil 
L.oFG. 



lOO THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

engineers liacl a keenness of Avit and a fertility of 
meclianical resource wliich veteran soldiers might 
easily have lacked. 

Vainly the Sepoys pelted " No. 4 " with 24-pounder 
shot, scourged it with musketry fire, or made wild 
rushes upon it. The gallant raihvay men devised 
new barriers for the doors, and new shields for the 
windows, and shot with cool and deadly aim, before 
which the Sepoys fell like rabbits. "No. 4," like 
Hougoumont at Waterloo, might be battered into 
wreck, but could not be captured. In the Memorial 
Church at Cawnpore to-day, not the least touching 
tablet is one upon which is inscribed : — - 

To the memory of the Engineers of the East India Rail- 
way, who died and were killed in the great insurrection 
of 1857. Erected in affectionate remembrance by their 
brother Engineers in the North-Western Provinces. 

Barrack No. 2 was a microscopic fortress, as fiercely 
attacked, and as valiantly defended as Barrack No. 4. 
It was first held by Lieutenant Glanville and a 
party of fourteen officers. Glanville was desperately 
wounded, and three-fourths of his heroic garrison 
killed ; then the barrack was put in charge of Mow- 
bray Thomson, of the 56th Native Infantry, one of 
the two officers who survived Cawnpore. Only sixteen 
men could find standing and fighting room in the 
barrack. The sixteen under Mowbray Thomson con- 
sisted of Ensign Henderson, a mere boy, half-a-dozen 



CAWNPOKE : THE SIEGE lOI 

Madras Fusileers, two plate-layers from tlie railway- 
works, and seven men of the 84th. As the garrison 
dwindled under the ever-scorching fire that played 
on the building, it was fed with new recruits. " Some- 
times/' says Mowbray Thomson, "a civilian, some- 
times a soldier came." But soldier and civilian alike 
plied his rifle with a grim and silent courage that 
never grew flurried, and that never knew fear, 

Mowbray Thomson, who was of an ingenious turn, 
contrived a perch in the topmost angle of the barrack 
wall, and planted there an officer named Stirling, who 
was at an age when other lads are playing at cricket 
with their schoolmates, but who was a quick and 
most deadly shot, and who "bagged" Sepoys as a 
sportsman, with a breech-loading shot-gun, might bag 
pheasants in a populous cover. Sometimes, on an 
agreed signal, the garrisons from No. 2 and No. 4 
would dash out together, a little knot of ragged, 
unwashed, smoke-blackened Sahibs, counting about 
thirty in all, and running without regular order, but 
with that expression on their faces which the Sepoys 
knew meant tragical business ; and, with musket and 
bayonet or hog-spear, they would sweep the line of 
barracks from end to end. 

Nor was courage confined to the fighting men. In 
one fierce sally, at an early stage of the siege, eleven 
mutineers were captured. A desperate fight was 
raging at the moment, and every man was required 
at the front. A rope was hastily passed round the 



I02 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

wrists of the eleven captured Sepoys, and they were 
put into the charge of the wife of a private of the 
32nd, named Bridget Widdowson. Drawn sword in 
hand, this soldier's wife, who had little, children of 
her own in the beleaguered entrenchments, stood 
over the eleven mutineers, while they squatted ner- 
vously on their hams before her ; and so business-like 
was the flourish of her weapon, so keen the sparkle 
in her eye, that not one man of the eleven dared to 
move. It was only when a guard of the stronger sex 
took Bridget's place that the eleven, somehow, con- 
trived to escape. Later on in the siege the supply of 
cartridges failed, and all the ladies were requisitioned 
for their stockings, to be used in the construction of 
new cartridges. When before, or since, did war claim 
for its service such strange material ! 

The Sepoys, at intervals, made furious assaults 
on the mud walls, but these were lined by shots 
too deadly, and held by hands too strong, to make 
success possible. Had the British, indeed, been the 
attacking force, they would have swept over the 
poor earthen barrier, not four feet high, with a 
single charge, before the siege was a dozen hours 
old. But, during the whole three weeks of their 
attack, though the Sepoys, counting fighting men, 
outnumbered their foes by, perhaps, thirty to one, 
they never succeeded in even reaching the irregular 
line of earth behind which the British stood. 

Their best chance occurred when, on the eighth 



CAWNPORE : THE SIEGE IO3 

night of the bombardment, the thatch on the 
barrack used as a hospital, took fire. The whole 
building was quickly in flames, and in their red 
light the entrenchment, in every part, was as 
visible as at noonday. The barrack was used as 
a sleeping-place for the women and children of 
the 32nd. These fled from the burning building, 
but not all the sick and wounded could be rescued ; 
some perished in the smoke and flame. That was, 
indeed, a night of horror. " The roar of the flames," 
says Trevelyan, " lost every ten seconds in the peal 
of the rebel artillery ; the whistle of the great shot ; 
the shrieks of the sufferers, who forgot their pain in 
the helpless anticipation of a sudden and agonising 
death ; the group of crying women and children 
huddled together in the ditch ; the stream of men 
running to and fro between the houses, laden with 
sacks of provisions, and kegs of ammunition, and 
living burdens more precious still ; the guards 
crouching silent and watchful, finger on trigger, 
each at his station along the external wall ; the 
forms of countless foes, revealed now and again by 
the fitful glare, prowling around through the outer 
gloom " — all this made up a strangely terrible scene. 
It is a proof of the quality of Moore's daring that, by 
way of proving to the Sepoys that this calamity had 
not lowered the spirits of the garrison, he organised 
on the following night a sally, and, with fifty picked 
men, dashed out on the rebel lines, swept them 



I04 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

for many hundreds of yards, spiked a number of 
24-pounder guns, and slew their gunners. 

But tlie burning of the barracks was the fatal 
turning-point of the siege. It destroyed the last 
shelter of the sick and the women and children. 
The whole stock of medicines and of surgical 
appliances was consumed, and the wounded could 
no longer have their injuries dressed. The eighty 
odd Sepoys Avho formed part of the garrison had 
been lodged in the Building now burned. It was 
deemed imprudent to allow them to mix with the 
garrison generally, and they were told to provide 
for themselves, and were allowed to steal out of 
the entrenchment and escape. 

The deaths amongst the British multiplied fast. 
The fire of the Sepoys grew more furious. " The 
round shot crashed and spun through the windows, 
raked the earthworks, and skipped about the open 
ground in every corner of our position. The bullets 
cut the air, and pattered on the wall like hail. The 
great shells rolled hissing along the floors and down 
the trenches, and, bursting, spread around them 
a circle of wreck and mutilation and promiscuous 
destruction." 

How fast the poor besieged wretches perished 
under this deadly hail may be imagined. A bomb, 
for example, fell into a cluster of seven ladies and 
slew them all in a breath. A soldier's wife, carrying a 
twin child on each shoulder, with her husband by her 



CAWNPORE : THE SIEGE 105 

side, was crossing a fire-raked angle of the entrench- 
ment. The same ball slew the husband, shattered 
both elbows of the wife, and tore asunder the body 
of one of the little twins. General Wheeler's son 
was lying wounded. His mother and two sisters 
were busy tending him, his father looking on, when 
a cannon-ball tore through the wall of the room 
and smashed the wounded lad's head literally to 
fragments. 

One well had been turned into a sepulchre ; 
to-day it is built over, and on the monument above 
it is written this inscription : — 

In a well under this enclosure were laid by tlie hands 
of their fellows in suffering the bodies of men, women, 
and children \\ho died hard by during the heroic defence 
of Wheeler's entrenchment, when beleagviered by the 
rebel Nana. 

Then follows a verse from Psalm cxli : — 

" Our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth, as 
when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the 
earth. But mine eyes are unto Thee, O God the 
Lord." 

The scanty supplies of water for that thirst-wasted 
crowd had to be drawn from the other well, and 
on it the Sepoys, day and night, concentrated their 
fire. To draw from it was a literal service of death. 
One brave-hearted civilian, named John MacKillop, 
described himself as " no fighting man," but claimed 



I06 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

to be appointed "captain of the well," and devoted 
himself to the business of drawing water, the most 
dangerous task of the whole entrenchment. He 
kept to his task for nearly a week, and then, while 
drawing a vessel of water, was shot. 

He staggered a few paces, mortally wounded, then 
fell, but held up with his dying hands the vessel 
filled with the precious fluid, and begged one who ran 
to his help to carry it to the lady to whom he had 
promised it. Bayard, dying on the banks of the 
Secia, and handing the water for which he himself 
thirsted to another dying soldier, has not a better 
title to be remembered than simple-minded John 
MacKillop, the " captain " of the Cawnpore well. 

On June 24 — when for nineteen days the wretched 
garrison had been under gun-fire — Wheeler writes to 
Lawrence, " All our carriages more or less disabled, 
ammunition short. . . . We have no instruments, no 
medicine : the British spirit alone remains ; but it 
cannot last for ever. . . . Surely we are not left to 
die like rats in a cage." Lawrence writes back on 
June 27, giving what encouragement he can, and 
warning him not to accept any terms. " You cannot 
rely on the Nana's promises. II a tue beaucoup de 
prisonniers." 

By the twenty-first day of the siege the position 
of the British was hopeless. Food had almost com- 
pletely failed. Their guns had become unserviceable. 
The unconquerable garrison was fast dwindling. 



CAWNPORE : THE SIEGE lO/ 

" At fare intervals behind the earthwork they stood 
— gaunt and feeble likenesses of men — clutching 
with muffled fingers the barrels of their muskets, 
which glowed with heat intolerable to the naked 
hand, so fierce Avas the blaze of the mid-day sun." 
They might have sallied out and cut their way 
through their enemies, or died fighting amongst 
them ; and they would have done so fifty times over 
but for one consideration. They could not take their 
women and children with them ; they could not 
abandon them. There was the certainty, too, that the 
Indian rains, long delayed, must soon burst upon them. 
Then their firearms would be rendered useless ; the 
holes in which the women and children crouched 
would be flooded ; their wall of mud would be washed 
away. 

No sign of help came from without. Wheeler's 
last despatch, dated June 24, ended with the words, 
" We want aid, aid, aid." But not merely no aid, no 
whisper even from the outer world reached the 
unhappy garrison. 

The Sepoys, on their part, were growing weary of 
the siege. Their losses were enormous. They might 
batter the entrenchments into dust, but they could 
not capture an inch of the blackened area these shot- 
wrecked lines of earth girdled. These Sahibs were 
fiercer than wounded tigers. They were, indeed, per- 
plexingiy and disquietingly aggressive. They were 
perpetually making fierce little sallies, whose track 



I08 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

■was marked by slaughtered Sepoys. Nana Saliib 
felt there was real danger that his allies might 
abandon their desperate task. He therefore under- 
took to accomplish by craft what the Sepoys could 
not do with cannon and bayonet. 

Nana Sahib unearthed from some gloomy room in 
the building which formed his headquarters a cap- 
tive Englishwoman waiting to be slaughtered, and 
sent her as a messenger to the entrenchments on the 
morning of June 24. " All those," ran the brief 
note, " who are in no way connected with the acts of 
Lord Dalhousie, and are willing to lay down their 
arms, shall receive a safe passage to Allahabad." 

Wheeler, with a soldier's pride, was unwilling to 
give up the patch of ground he held for the Queen. 
The younger men, with the flame of battle in their 
blood, were eager to fight to the bitter end. To trust 
to the faith of mutineers, or to the humanity of a 
Hindu of Nana Sahib's tiger-like nature, they argued, 
was a sadly desperate venture. Yet that way there 
miwht lie a chance of life for the women and children. 
Death was certain if the sieofe lasted. It might be 
less certain if they capitulated. 

The 25 th was spent in negotiations. Moore and 
two others met the Nana's representatives at a spot 
200 yards outside the entrenchments. They offered 
to surrender on condition that they were allowed to 
march out under arms, with sixty rounds of ammu- 
nition to each man ; that carriages were provided for 



CAWNPORE : THE SIEGE IO9 

the wounded, the ladies, and the children ; and that 
boats, duly stocked with food, were supplied to carry 
them to Allahabad. In the afternoon the Nana sent 
in a verbal message saying that he accepted the terms, 
and the British must march out that night. They 
refused to do this, as they needed to make some 
preparations. On this, the Nana sent an insolent 
message announcing that he must have his will ; that 
if they delayed he would open on them with all his 
guns ; and, as they were perishing fast from mere 
hunger, a few hours would leave not one of them 
alive. 

Whiting, a gallant soldier, met the insolent threat 
with high courage. Let the Nana's soldiers, if they 
liked, he answered, tr^'- to carry the entrenchments. 
They had tried in vain for three weeks to do so. 
"If pushed to the last extremity," Whiting added, 
" they had powder enough in the magazine to blow 
both armies into the Gano'es ! " 

Then the Nana changed his tone, and grew 
effusively polite. His emissaries condoled with 
Wheeler for the sufferings he had gone through. 
But, thanks to Allah, the Ever-Merciful, all was 
ended now ! The sahibs and the memsahibs had 
nothing before them but a pleasant river voyage 
to their friends ! A committee of British officers, 
under a guard of rebel cavalry, inspected the boats 
gathered at the landing-place, scarcely a mile dis- 
tant from the entrenchments ; at their request tem- 



I I O THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

porary floors of bamboos were laid do-wn in the boats, 
and roofs of tbatcb stretched over them. 

Nana Sahib, as a matter of fact, meant murder ; 
murder, sudden, bloody, and all-embracing. But he 
enjoyed, so to speak, toying with his unconscious 
victims beforehand. Over the gorgon-like visage of 
murder he hung a smiling and dainty mask, and 
with soft-voiced courtesy he consented to all ar- 
rangements for the " comfort " of his victims ! 

That night at Cawnpore there were two busy 
spots, a mile distant from each other. In the en- 
trenchments 'the poor survivors were preparing for 
their march, a march — though they knew it not — 
to the grave. Mothers were collecting the garments 
of their little ones. Some paid a last sad visit to the 
fatal well, where their dead were lying. Others were 
packing their scanty possessions, intending to carry 
them with them. Soldiers were cleaning their 
muskets and storing their cartridges. And a mile 
distant, Tantia Topee, the Nana's general, was plant- 
ing his cannon and arranging his Sepoys so as to 
pour upon the boats at a given signal a fire which 
should slay the whole unhappy company they 
carried. 



CHAPTER V 

CAWNPORE : THE MURDER GHAUT 

IT was a company of some 450 persons — old and 
young, sick and wounded, men, women, and 
children — who filed out of Wheeler's entrenchments 
on the morning of June 27, in that sad pilgrimage. 
Trevelyan describes the scene : — 

First came the men of the 32nd Regiment, their 
dauntless captain at their head ; thinking little as ever 
of the past, but much of the future ; and so marching 
unconscious towards the death which he had often courted. 
Then moved on the throng of native bearers, groaning in 
monotonous cadence beneath the weight of the palan- 
quins, through whose sliding panels might be discerned 
the pallid forms of the wotmded ; their limbs rudely 
bandaged with shirt-sleeves and old stockings and strips 
of gown and petticoat. And next, musket on shoulder 
and revolver in belt, followed they who could still walk 
and fight. Step was not kept in those ranks. Little was 
there of martial array, or soldier-like gait and attitude. 
In discoloured flannel and ta,ttered nankeen, mute and in 
pensive mood, tramped by the remnant of the immortal 
garrison. These men had finished their toil, and had 
fought their battle, and now, if hope was all but dead 
within them, there survived at least no residue of fear. 



I 1 2 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

Vibart, in his single person, constituted tlie rear- 
guard. A wounded man lying in a bed carried by 
four native bearers, an English lady "walking by his 
side, came out of the entrenchment shortly after the 
rest had left. It was Colonel Ewart, of the 34th, 
with his faithful wife. The little group could not 
overtake the main body, and when it had passed out 
of sight round a bend in the road a crowd of the 
colonel's own Sepoys stopped the poor wife and her 
wounded husband. The porters were ordered to 
lay the bed down, and with brutal jests the Sepoys 
mocked their dying colonel. " Is not this a fine 
parade ? " they asked, with shouts of laughter. 

Then, mirth giving place to murder, they suddenly 
fell upon Ewart, and literally hewed him to pieces 
under the eyes of his agonised wife. They told her 
to go in peace, as they would not kill a woman, and 
by way of comment on the statement one of them 
stepped back to give himself room for the stroke, 
and slew her with a single blow. 

The road to the Ganges, a little over a mile in 
length, crossed a little wooden bridge painted white, 
and swung to the right down a ravine to the river. 
" A vast multitude," says Trevelyan, " speechless and 
motionless as spectres, watched their descent into 
that valley of the shadow of death." Directly the 
last Englishman had crossed the bridge and turned 
down the lane, a double line of Sepoys was drawn 
across the entrance to the Ghaut, and slowly the 



CAWNPORE : THE MURDER GHAUT I I 3 

great company made its way down to the river's edge. 
Some forty boats were lying there — eight-oared coun- 
try budgerows, ckimsy structures, with thatched roofs, 
and looking not unlike floating hay-stacks. They lay 
in the shallow water a few yards from the bank. 

A moment's pause took place when the crowd of 
sahibs and memsahibs, with their wounded and the 
little ones, reached the water's edge. There were no 
planks by Avhich they could reach the boats, none 
of the boatmen spoke a word, or made a movement. 
They sat silent, like spectators at a tragedy. 

Then the crowd splashed into the water. The 
wounded were lifted into the boats ; women with 
their children clambered on board ; the men were 
finding their places ; the officers, standing knee-deep 
in the river, were helping the last and feeblest to 
embark. It was nine o'clock in the morning. 

Suddenly, in the hot morning air, a bugle screamed 
shrill and menacing, somewhere up the ravine. It 
was the signal ! Out of the forty boats the native 
boatmen leaped, and splashed through the water to 
the bank. Into the straw roofs of many of the boats 
they thrust, almost in the act of leaping, red-hot 
embers, and nearly a score of boats were almost 
instantly red-crested with flames. 

A little white Hindu temple high up on the bank 
overlooked the whole scene. Here sat Tantia Topee, 
the Nana's general, with a cluster of Sepoy officers. 
He controlled the whole drama from this point of 

H 



I 1 4 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

vantage like a stage-manager ; and, on his signal, 
from the lines of Sepoys who were lying concealed 
in the undergrowth, from guns perched high on the 
river-bank, and from both sides of the river at once, 
there broke upon the forty boats, with their flaming 
roofs and hapless crowds of white-faced passengers, 
a terrific storm of shot. 

Those slain by the sudden bullet were many, and 
were happy in their fate. The wounded perished 
under the burning flakes and strangling smoke of 
the flaming straw roofs. Many leaped into the river, 
and, crouching chin-deep under the sides of the 
boats, tried to shelter themselves from the cruel 
tempest of shot. Some swam out into the stream 
till they sank in the reddened water under the 
leisurely aim of the Sepoys. Others, leaping into 
the water, tried to push off the stranded boats. 
Some of yet sterner temper, kneeling under the 
roofs of burning thatch, or standing waist-deep in 
the Ganges, fired back on the Sepoys, who by this 
time lined the river's edge. 

General Wheeler, according to one report, perished 
beneath the stroke of a Sepoy's sword as he stepped 
out of his palkee. His daughters were slain with 
him, save one, the youngest, who, less happy, was 
carried ofl' by a native trooper to die later. In the 
ofiicial evidence taken long afterwards is the account 
given by a half-caste Christian woman. " General 
Wheeler," she said, " came last in a palkee. They 



CAWNPORE : THE MURDER GHAUT I I 5 

carried him into the water near the boat. I stood 
close by. He said, ' Carry me a little farther towards 
the boat.' But a trooper said, ' No ; get out here.' As 
the general got out of the palkee head foremost, the 
trooper gave him a cut with his sword through the 
neck, and he fell into the water. My son was killed 
near him. I saw it, alas ! alas ! Some were stabbed 
with bayonets ; others cut down. Little infants were 
torn in pieces. We saw it, we did ! and tell you only 
what we saw. Other children were stabbed and 
thrown into the river. The school-girls were burnt 
to death. I saw their clothes and hair catch fire." 

Presently the fire of the Sepoys ceased, and the 
wretched survivors of the massacre — 125 in number 
— were dragged ashore. They came stumbling up 
the slope of the bank, a bedraggled company, their 
clothing dripping with the water of the Ganges, or 
soiled with its mud. They crept up the ravine down 
which, a brief hour before, they had walked with 
Hope shining before them. Now Grief kept pace with 
them ; Despair went before them ; Death followed 
after. They had left their dead in the river behind 
them ; they were walking to a yet more cruel fate 
in front. " I saw that many of the ladies were 
wounded," said one witness afterwards ; " their 
clothes had blood on them. Some had their dresses 
torn, but all had clothes. I saw one or two children 
without clothes. There were no men in the party, but 
only some boys of twelve or thirteen years of age." 



I 1 6 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

The sad company was marched back to the old 
cantonment, where the Nana himself came out to 
exult over his victims. Lady Canning, in her journal, 
writes : " There were fifteen young ladies in Cawn- 
poro, and at first they wrote such happy letters, 
saying time had never been so pleasant ; it was 
every day like a picnic, and they hoped they would 
not be sent away ; they said a regiment would come, 
and they felt quite safe. Poor, poor things ; not one 
of them Avas saved." How many of that girlish band 
of fifteen perished, with flaming hair and dress, in 
the boats ? Or did they stand shivering in the icy 
chill of terror, amongst the captives over whom the 
tiger glance of Nana Sahib wandered in triumph ? 
After being duly inspected, these poor captives were 
thrust into a couple of rooms in the Savada-house, 
and left to what reflections may be imagined. 

Three boats out of the forty, meanwhile, had 
actually got away. Two drifted to the Oude shore, 
and were overtaken by instant massacre. One boat, 
however, had for the moment a happier fate. It 
caught the mid- current of the Ganges, and went 
drifting downwards ; and that solitary drifting boat, 
without oars or rudder, bearing up in its crazy planks 
above the dark waters of the Ganges the sole survivors 
of the heroic garrison of Cawnpore, started on a 
wilder, stranger voyage than is recorded elsewhere 
in all history. 

It was Vibart's boat; and by a curious chance it 



CAWNPORE : THE MURDER GHAUT I 1 7 

included in its passengers the most heroic spirits 
in the garrison. Moore was there, and Ashe, and 
Delafosse ; Mowbray Thomson swam out to it from 
his own boat, and with him Murphy, a private of 
the 32nd — two of the four who finally survived out 
of the whole garrison. The boat was intended to 
carry only fifty, but nearly a hundred fugitives were 
crowded within its crazy sides. 

A cannon-shot smashed its rudder. It had no 
oars nor food. From either bank a hail of shot 
pursued it. Every now and again the clumsy boat 
would ground on some shallow ; then, while the 
Sepoys shot fast and furiously, a group of officers 
would jump overboard, and push the clumsy craft 
afloat again. 

Moore, pushing at the boat in this fashion, with 
broken collar-bone, was shot through the heart. 
Ashe and Bowden and Glanville shared the same 
fate. Soon the dying and the dead on the deck of 
this shot-pelted boat were as many as the living. 
"We had no food in the boat," wrote Mowbray 
Thomson afterwards ; " the water of the Ganges 
was all that passed our lips. The wounded and 
the dead were often entangled together in the bottom 
of the boat." 

When evening came the boat ran heavily aground. 
Under the screen of darkness the women and chil- 
dren were landed, and the boat, with great effort, 
floated again; the Sepoys accompanying the opera- 



Il8 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

tion with volleys of musketry, fliglits of burning 
arrows, and even a clumsy attempt at a fire-ship. 
" No one slept that night, and no one ate, for food 
there was none on board." 

When day broke the tragical voyage was con- 
tinued, still to an accompaniment of musketry 
bullets. At two o'clock the boat stranded again. 
"Major Vibart," says Mowbray Thomson, "had been 
shot through one arm on the preceding day. Never- 
theless, he got out, and, while helping to push off 
the boat, was shot through the other arm. Captain 
Turner had both his legs smashed, Captain Whiting 
was killed. Lieutenant Harrison was shot dead." 
These are sample records from that strange log. 

Towards evening a boat, manned by some sixty 
Sepoys, appeared in pursuit, but it, too, ran upon a 
sand-bank, and this gave the sahibs an opportunity 
at which they leaped with fierce joy. From the 
sorely battered boat, which had been pelted for 
nearly two days and nights with bullets, a score of 
haggard and ragged figures tumbled, and came 
splashing, Avith stern purpose, through the shallows. 
And then, for some twenty breathless minutes, the 
Sepoys, by way of change, instead of being hunters, 
became the hunted, and only some half-dozen, who 
were good swimmers, escaped to tell their comrades 
what the experience was like. Mowbray Thomson 
tells the story in disappointingly bald prose. " In- 
stead of waiting for them to attack us," he says. 



CAWNPORE : THE MURDER GHAUT I I 9 

" eighteen or twenty of us charged them, and few of 
their number escaped to tell the story," 

Night fell black and stormy, and through falling 
rain and the sighing darkness the boat, with its 
freight of dead and dying, drifted on. It recalls the 
ship of which Tennyson sang, with its " dark freight, 
a vanished life." In the morning it was found that 
the boat had drifted into some backwater whence 
escape was impossible. The Sepoys lined the bank 
and fired heavily. Vibart, who was dying, but still 
remained the master spirit of the little company, 
ordered a sally. "Whilst there was a sound arm 
among them that could load and fire, or thrust with 
the bayonet," says Kaye, " still the great game of the 
English was to go to the front and smite the enemy, 
as a race that seldom waited to be smitten." 

Mowbray Thomson and Delafosse, with some 
twelve men of the 82nd and 34th, clambered over 
the side of the boat, waded ashore, and charged the 
Sepoys, who fled before them. They pressed eagerly 
on, shooting and stabbing, but presently found new 
crowds of the enemy gathering in their rear. The 
gallant fourteen faced about, and fought their way 
back to where they had left the boat. Alas ! it had 
vanished. 

They commenced to march along the river-bank 
in the direction of Allahabad, with an interval of 
twenty paces between each man, so as to make the 
fire of their pursuers less deadly. Shoeless, faint 



I20 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

with hunger, bare-headed, they fought their way for 
some miles. Their pursuers grew rapidly in num- 
bers and daring. One Englishman had fallen; the 
others wheeled suddenly round, and seized a small 
Hindu temple, determined to make a last stand there. 
There was just room enough for the thirteen to stand 
upright in the little shrine. Their pursuers, after a 
few minutes' anxious pause, tried to rush the door ; 
but, as the historian of the fight puts it, " there was 
no room for any of them inside" — though, as it 
turned out, a good deal of room was required out- 
side for the dead bodies of those who had made the 
attempt. 

An effort was made to smoke out, and then to 
burn out, the unconquerable sahibs. When these 
devices failed, gunpowder was brought up, and ar- 
rangements made for blowing the entire shrine, Avith 
its indomitable garrison, into space. Seeing these 
preparations, the British charged out. Seven of 
them, who could swim, stripped themselves, and 
headed the sally, intending to break through to the 
river. 

Seven naked sahibs, charging through smoke and 
flame, with levelled bayonets, would naturally be a 
somewhat disquieting apparition, and the seven had 
no difficulty in breaking through their enemies, and 
reaching the Ganges. The other six, who could not 
swim, ran full into the Sepoy mass, and died mute 
and fio'htino-. 



CAWNPORE : THE MURDER GHAUT I 2 I 

Then commenced the pursuit of the swimmers. 
Two were soon shot and sank; a third, swimming 
on his back, and not seeing where he was going, 
struck a sandspit, where some natives were waiting to 
beat out his brains at leisure. There remained four 
— Mowbray Thomson, Delafosse, and two privates, a 
pair of strong-Hmbed and brave-hearted Irishmen, 
named Murphy and Sullivan. This heroic and 
much-enduring four, diving like wild ducks at the 
flash of hostile muskets, out-swam and out-tired their 
pursuers. When at last they landed, they had be- 
tween them "a flannel shirt, a strip of linen cloth, 
and five severe wounds" ! They found refuge with a 
friendly landowner, and reached the British lines, 
though Sullivan died within a fortnight of reach- 
ing the place of safety. 

Meanwhile, what had happened to the boat after 
the gallant fourteen left it ? Its crew consisted of 
little else than wounded men, dead bodies, and ex- 
hausted women and children. Upon these swooped 
down a great crowd of enemies. The boat was cap- 
tured, and its stem promptly turned back towards 
Cawnpore. On the morning of June 30, the boat lay 
again at the entrance of the fatal ghaut. 

In the evidence taken long afterwards, there were 
brought back, according to one native witness, sixty 
sahibs, twenty-five memsahibs, and four children. 
" The Nana ordered the sahibs to be separated from 
the memsahibs, and shot. So the sahibs were seated 



122 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

on the ground, and two companies of the Nadiree 
Regiment stood ready to fire. Then said one of the 
memsahibs, the doctor's wife (What doctor ? How 
should I know ?) ' I will not leave my husband. If 
he must die, I will die with him.' So she ran and 
sat down behind her husband, clasping him round 
the waist. Directly she said this, the other mem- 
sahibs said, ' We also will die with our husbands,' 
and they all sat down, each with her husband. Then 
their husbands said, ' Go back,' but they would not. 
Whereupon the Nana ordered his soldiers ; and they, 
going in, pulled them away forcibly. But they could 
not pull away the doctor's wife." 

Captain Seppings asked leave to read prayers before 
they died. His hands were untied; one arm hung 
broken, but, standing up, he groped in his pocket for 
a little prayer-book, and commenced to read — but 
what prayer or psalm, none now can tell. " After he 
had read," as the witness tells the story, " he shut the 
book, and the sahibs shook hands all round. Then 
the Sepoys fired. One sahib rolled one way, one an- 
other as they sat. But they were not dead, only 
wounded. So they went in and finished them off 
with swords." When all was over, the twenty-four 
memsahibs, with their four children, were sent to 
swell the little crowd of captives in Savada-house. 
Borne seventeen days of weeping life yet intervened 
between them and the fatal Well. 

The story of the final act in the great tragedy at 



CAWNPORE : THE MURDER GHAUT I 23 

Cawnpore cannot be told without some account of 
events outside Cawnpore itself. A relieving force had 
been organised at Calcutta, of which Neill's Fusileers 
at Allahabad were the advance guard ; but a leader was 
wanted, and on June 17 Sir Patrick Grant brought 
Havelock, " the dust of Persia still in the crevices of 
his sword-handle," to the Governor- General, saying, 
" Your Excellency, I have brought you the man." 

Havelock was sixty-two years of age when the great 
chance of his life came to him. A little man, prim, 
erect, alert, quick-footed, stern-featured, with snow- 
white moustache and beard. Havelock, no doubt, 
had his limitations. A strain of severity ran through 
his character. " He was always," says one who served 
under him, " as sour as if he had swallowed a pint of 
vinegar, except when he was being shot at, and then 
he was as blithe as a schoolboy out for a holiday." 
There is a touch of burlesque, of course, in that sen- 
tence ; but Havelock was, no doubt, austere of temper, 
impatient of fools, and had a will that moved to its 
end with something of the fiery haste and scorn of 
obstacles proper to a cannon ball. He was fond, too, 
of making Napoleonic orations to his men, and had 
a high-pitched, carrying voice, which could make 
itself audible to a regiment. And the British soldier 
in fighting mood is rather apt to be impatient of 
oratory. 

But Havelock was a trained and scientific soldier, 
audacious and resolute in the highest degree ; a deeply 



124 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

religious man, with a sense of duty of the antique 
sort, that scorned ease, and reckoned life, when 
weighed against honour, as a mere grain of wind- 
blown dust. And Havelock, somehow, inspired in 
his men a touch of that sternness of valour we asso- 
ciate with Cromwell's Ironsides. 

It is curious, in view of Havelock's achievements 
and after-fame, to read in the current literature of the 
moment, the impression he made upon hasty critics 
in Calcutta and elsewhere. The Friend of India, 
the leading Calcutta journal, described him as a 
"fossil general"! Lady Canning, in her journal, 
writes: "General Havelock is not in fashion. No 
doubt he is fussy and tiresome ; but his little, old, 
stiff figure looks as active and fit for use as if he were 
made of steel." She again and again refers to " dear 
little old Havelock, with his fussiness " — " fussiness " 
being in this case, little more than the impatience 
of a strong will set to a great task, and fretted by 
threads of red tape. Lord Hardinge had said, "If 
India is ever in danger, let Havelock be put in com- 
mand of an army, and it will be saved." And Have- 
lock's after-history amply justified that prediction. 

Havelock had about the tiniest force that ever set 
forth to the task of saving an empire. It never was 
able to put on the actual battle-field 1500 men. 
There were 76 men of the Royal Artillery; less than 
400 of the Madras Fusileers ; less than 300 of the 
7Sth Highlanders ; 435 men of the 64th, and 190 of 



CAWNPORE : THE MURDER GHAUT I 2 $ 

the 84tli, with 450 Sikhs of somewhat doubtful loyalty, 
and 50 native irregular horse, whose disloyalty was 
not in the least doubtful. Havelock's reliable cavalry 
consisted of 20 volunteers, amateurs mostly, under 
Barrow. 

Measured against the scale of modern armies, 
Havelock's force seems little more than a corporal's 
guard. But the fighting value of this little army was 
not to bo measured by counting its files. " Better 
soldiers," says Archibald Forbes, "have never trod 
this earth." They commenced their march from 
Allahabad on July 7; they marched, and fought, 
and conquered under the intolerable heat of an 
Indian midsummer, and against overwhelming odds ; 
until when, on September 19 — little more than eight 
weeks afterwards — Outram and Havelock crossed the 
Ganges in their advance on Lucknow, only 250 of 
Havelock's " Ironsides " were left to take part in that 
advance. In the whole history of the war, men have 
seldom dared, and endured, and achieved more than 
did Havelock's column in the gallant but vain 
struggle to relieve Cawnpore. 

Maude commanded its tiny battery ; Hamilton led 
the Highlanders ; Stirling the 64th ; the gallant, ill- 
fated Renaud, the Fusileers. Stuart Beatson was 
Havelock's assistant adjutant-general; Fraser Tytler 
was his assistant quartermaster - general. Of the 
Highlanders — the Ross-shire Buffs — Forbes says, " It 
was a remarkable regiment; Scottish to the back- 



126 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

bone ; Highland to the core of its heart. Its ranks 
were filled with Mackenzies, Macdonalds, TuUochs, 
Macnabs, Bosses, Giinns, and Mackays. The Chris- 
tian name of half the Grenadier company was Donald. 
It could glow with the Highland fervour ; it could be 
sullen with the Highland dourness ; and it may be 
added, it could charge with the stern and irresistible 
valour of the North. 

When the little force began its march for C awn- 
pore, the soil was swampy with the first furious 
showers of the rainy season, and in the intervals of 
the rain, the skies were white with the glare of an 
Indian sun in July. " For the first three days," says 
Maude, " they waded in a sea of slush, knee-deep 
now, and now breast-high, while the flood of tropical 
rain beat down from overhead. As far to right and 
left as eye could pierce extended one vast morass." 
After these three days' toil through rain and mud, 
the rains vanished ; the sky above them became like 
white flame, and, till they reached Cawnpore, Have- 
lock's troops had to march and fight under a sun that 
was well-nigh as deadly as the enemy's bullets. 

On July 1 1 Havelock marched fifteen miles under 
the intolerable heat to Arrapore. Camping for a 
few hours, he started again at midnight, picked up 
Renaud's men while the stars were yet glittering in the 
heaven, pushed steadily on, and at seven o'clock, after 
a march of sixteen miles, camped at Belinda, four 
miles out of Futtehpore. The men had outmarched 



CAWNPORE : THE MURDER GHAUT I 27 

the tents and baggage, and were almost exhausted. 
They had fallen out, and were scattered under the 
trees, " some rubbing melted fat on their blistered 
feet, others cooling their chafes in the pools ; many 
more too dead-beaten to do anything but lie still." 
It was Sunday morning. 

Suddenly there broke above the groups of tired 
soldiery the roar of cannon. Grape-shot swept over 
the camp. Over the crest and down the opposite 
slopes rode, with shouts and brandished tulwars, a 
huge mass of rebel cavalry. It was a genuine sur- 
prise ! But the bugles rang out shrilly over the 
scattered clusters of Havelock's men. They fell 
instantly into formation ; skirmishers ran to the 
front, and the enemy's cavalry came to an abrupt 
halt. It was a surprise for them, too. They had 
expected to see only Renaud's composite force — a 
mere handful ; what they beheld instead, was Have- 
lock's steady and workmanlike front. 

Havelock did not attack immediately. His cool 
judgment warned him that his over- wearied soldiers 
needed rest before being flung into the fight, and 
orders were given for the men to lie down in rank. 
Presently the rebel cavalry wheeled aside, and re- 
vealed a long front of infantry, with batteries of 
artillery, and the rebel general, finding the British 
motionless, actually began a movement to turn their 
flank. 

Then Havelock struck, and struck swiftly and hard. 



128 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

Maude's battery was sent forward. He took his pieces 
at a run to within 200 yards of the enemy's front, 
wheeled round, and opened fire. The British in- 
fantry, covered by a spray of skirmishers armed 
with Enfield rifles, swept steadily forward. The 
rebel general, conspicuous on a gorgeously adorned 
elephant, was busy directing the movements of his 
force; and Maude tells the story of how Stuart 
Beatson, who stood near his guns, asked him to 
"knock over that chap on the elephant." "I dis- 
mounted," says Maude, " and laid the gun myself, a 
9-pounder, at 'line of metal' (700 yards) range, 
and my first shot went in under the beast's tail, and 
came out at his chest, rolling it over and giving its 
rider a bad fall." 

Its rider, as it happened, was Tantia Topee, the 
Nana's general; and had that 9-pound ball struck 
him, instead of his elephant, it might have saved the 
lives of the women and children in Cawnpore. 

Meanwhile, the 64th and the Highlanders in one 
resolute charge had swept over the rebel guns. 
Renaud, with his Fusileers, had crumpled up their 
flank, and the Nana's troops, a torrent of fugitives, 
were in full flight to Futtehpore. The battle was 
practically won in ten minutes, all the rebel guns 
being captured — so fierce and swift was the British 
advance. 

The rebel Sepoys knew the fighting quality of 
the sahibs ; but now they found a quite new fierce- 



CAWNPORE : THE MURDER GHAUT 129 

ness in it. Havelock's soldiers were on fire to avenge 
a tliousand murders. And, flying fast, as Trevelyan 
puts it, the Nana's troops " told everywhere that the 
sahibs had come back in strange guise ; some draped 
like women to remind them what manner of wrong 
they were sworn to requite ; others, conspicuous by 
tall blue caps, who hit their mark without being seen 
to fire — the native description of the Enfield rifle 
with which the Madras Fusileers were armed. 

The fight at Futtehpore is memorable as being the 
first occasion on which British troops and the rebel 
Sepoys met in open battle. The Nana had shortly 
before issued a proclamation announcing that the 
British had " all been destroyed and sent to hell by 
the pious and sagacious troops who were firm to their 
religion " ; and, as " no trace of them was left, it 
became the duty of all the subjects of the Govern- 
ment to rejoice at the delightful intelligence." But 
Futtehpore showed that "all the yellow-faced and 
narrow-minded people " had not been " sent to hell." 
They had reappeared, indeed, with uncomfortable 
energy, and a disagreeable determination to despatch 
every Sepoy they could capture somewhere in that 
direction ! 

Havelock's men had marched nineteen miles, and 
fought and won a great battle, without a particle of 
food, and so dreadful was the heat that twelve men 
died of sunstroke. Havelock camped on July 1 3 to 
give his men rest, resumed his march on the 14th, 

I 



I30 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

and on tlie morning of the i5tli found tlie Sepoys 
drawn up in great strength in front of a village called 
Aong, twenty-two miles south of Cawnpore. Renaud 
led his Fusileers straight at the village, and carried 
it with a furious bayonet charge, but the gallant 
leader of the " blue caps " fell, mortally wounded, in 
the charge. Maude's guns smashed the enemy's 
artillery, and when the Highlanders and the 64th 
were seen coming on, the Sepoys again fled. 

Havelock pressed steadily on, and found the 
Sepoys had rallied and were drawn up in a strong 
position, covered by a rivulet, swollen bank-high 
with recent rains, known as Pandoo Nuddee. A fine 
stone bridge crossed the river ; it was guarded by a 
24-pound gun, a 25-pound carronade, and a strong 
force of infantry. Havelock quickly developed his 
plan of attack. Maude raced forward with his guns, 
and placed them at three different points, so as to 
bring a concentric fire to bear on the bridge. Maude's 
first blast of spherical case-shell broke the sponge 
staves of the heavy guns in the rebel battery, and 
rendered them useless. 

The Sepoys tried to blow up the bridge. But 
Maude's fire was hot; Stephenson, with his "blue 
caps," was coming up at the double, and the Sepoys 
got flurried. They had mined the bridge, and the 
mine was fired prematurely. The explosion shattered 
the parapet of the bridge, but through the white 
smoke came the Fusileers, their bayonets sparkling 



CAWNPORE : THE MURDER GHAUT I 3 I 

vengefuUy. The Highlanders followed eagerly in 
support. The bridge was carried, the guns taken, 
the rebel gunners bayoneted, the rebel centre pierced 
and broken, and the rebel army itself swept north- 
wards, with infinite dust and noise, in a mere tumult 
of panic-stricken flight. 

The British camped for the night on the battle- 
field. At three o'clock in the morning, with the stars 
sparkling keenly over their heads, and a full moon 
flooding the camp with its white light, Havelock 
formed up his men. He told them he had learned 
there were some 200 women and children still held 
as prisoners in Cawnpore, the survivors of the 
massacre of June 27. " Think of our women and 
the little ones," he said, " in the power of those devils 
incarnate." The men answered with a shout, and, 
without waiting for the word of command, went 
" fours right," and took the road. 

It was a march of twenty miles. The sun rose 
and scorched the silent and panting ranks of the 
British with its pitiless heat. The Highlanders suf- 
fered most ; they were wholly unprepared for a sum- 
mer campaign, and were actually wearing the heavy 
woollen doublets intended for winter use ; but their 
stubborn Northern blood sustained them. Every 
now and again, indeed, some poor fellow in the ranks 
dropped as though shot through the head, literally 
killed with the heat. Nana Sahib himself held the 
approach to Cawnpore, with 7000 troops and a power- 



132 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

fill artillery, and his position was found to be of great 
strengtli. 

Havelock studied it a few minutes witli keen and 
soldierly glance, and formed his plans. He had the 
genius which can use rules, but which also, on occa- 
sion, can dispense with rules. He violated all the 
accepted canons of war in his attack upon the Nana's 
position. He amused the enemy's front with the fire 
of a company of the Fusileers, and the manceuvres 
of Barrow's twenty volunteer sabres, while with his 
whole force he himself swept round to the right to 
turn the Nana's flank. Havelock, that is, risked his 
baggage and his communications, to strike a daring 
blow for victory. 

As Havelock's men pressed grimly forward, screened 
by a small grove, they heard the bands of the Sepoy 
regiments playing "Auld lang syne" and "Cheer, 
boys, cheer," and the sound made the men clutch 
their muskets with a little touch of added fury. The 
Sepoys discovered Havelock's strategy rather late, 
and swung their guns round to meet it. Their fire 
smote the flank of Havelock's column cruelly, but the 
British never paused nor faltered. When Havelock 
judged his turning movement was sufficiently ad- 
vanced, he wheeled the column into line. His light 
guns were insufficient to beat down the fire of the 
heavy pieces worked by the rebels, and he launched 
his Highlanders at the battery. They moved dourly 
forward under a heavy fire, till within eighty yards of 



CAWNPORE : THE MURDER GHAUT I 3 3 

the guns. Then the bayonets came down to the 
charge, and with heads bent low and kilts flying in 
the wind, the Highlanders went in with a run. The 
charge was in perfect silence, not a shot nor a shout 
being heard; but it was so furious that mound and 
guns were carried in an instant, and the village itself 
swept through. As Forbes describes it, " Mad with 
the ardour of battle, every drop of Highland blood 
afire in every vein, the Ross-shire men crashed right 
through the village, and cleared it before they dropped 
out of the double." They had crushed the enemy's 
left, taken its guns, and sent a great mass of Sepoys 
whirling to the rear. 

But the moment they emerged from the village, 
the great howitzer in the Nana's centre opened fire 
upon the Highlanders, and once more the unequal 
duel between bayonet and cannon had to be renewed. 
Havelock himself galloped up to where the High- 
landers were reforming after the confusion and rap- 
ture of their rush, and, pointing with his sword to the 
great howitzer, pouring its red torrent of flame upon 
them, cried : " Now, Highlanders ! another charge like 
that wins the day." 

The Gaelic blood was still on fire. The ofiicers 
could hardly restrain their men till they were roughly 
formed. In another moment the kilts and bonnets 
and bayonets of the 78th were pouring in a torrent 
over the big gun, and the rebel centre was broken ! 
Meanwhile the 64th and 84th had thrust roughly 



134 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

back Nana Sahib's right wing ; but, fighting bravely, 
the Sepoys clung with unusual courage to a village 
about a mile to the rear of the position they first held, 
and their guns, drawn up in its front, fired fast and 
with deadly effect. 

The Highlanders, pressing on from the centre, found 
themselves shoulder to shoulder with the 64th, ad- 
vancing from the left. Maude's guns, with the teams 
utterly exhausted, were a mile to the rear. Men were 
dropping fast in the British ranks, worn out with 
marching and charging under heat so cruel. In the 
smoke-blackened lines men were stumbling from 
very fatigue as they advanced on the quick red 
flashes and eddying smoke of the battery which 
covered the village. But Havelock, riding with the 
leading files, knew the soldier's nature "from the 
crown of his shako down to his ammunition boots." 
" Who," he cried, " is to take that village — the High- 
landers or the 64th ? " Both regiments had Northern 
blood in them — the 64th is now known as the North 
Staffordshire — and that sudden appeal, that pitted 
regiment against regiment, sent the stout Midlanders 
of the 64th and the hot-blooded Gaels from the 
clachans and glens and loch sides of Koss-shire, 
forward in one racing charge that carried guns and 
village without a check. 

The battle seemed won, and Havelock, reforming 
his column, moved steadily forward. But the Nana 
was playing his last card, and his generals at least 



OAWNPOKE : THE MURDER GHAUT I 3 5 

showed desperate courage. They made a third stand 
athwart the Cawnpore road, and within a short dis- 
tance of Cawnpore itself. A 24-pounder, flanked on 
either side by guns of lighter calibre, covered the 
Nana's front, and his infantry, a solid mass, was 
drawn up behind the guns. Havelock's men had 
marched twenty miles, and made a dozen desperate 
charges. Their guns were far in the rear. Yet to 
halt was to be destroyed. 

Havelock allowed his men to fling themselves 
panting on the ground for a few minutes ; then, 
riding to the front, and turning his back to the 
enemy's guns, so as to face the men, he cried in his 
keen, high-pitched voice, " The longer you look at it, 
men, the less you will like it ! The brigade will 
advance — left battalion leading." 

The left battalion was the 64th. Major Stirling 
promptly brought forward his leading files, and 
Havelock's son and aide-de-camp galloped down, 
and, riding beside Stirling, shared with him the 
leadership of the charge — a circumstance for which 
the 64th, as a matter of fact, scarcely forgave him, 
as they wanted no better leadership than that of 
their own major. There was less of elan and dash 
about this charge than in the earlier charges of the 
day ; but in steady valour it was unsurpassed. 

On came the 64th, silently and coolly. Havelock 
himself, in a letter to his wife, wrote with a father's 
pride about his son. "I never saw so brave a youth," 



136 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

he wrote, " as the boy Harry : he placed himself 
opposite the muzzle of a gun that was scattering 
death into the ranks of the 64th Queen's, and led 
on the regiment under a shower of grape to its 
capture. This finished the light. The grape was 
deadly, but he calm, as if telling George stories about 
India/' 

When the steady but shot-tormented line of the 
64th found itself so near the battery that through 
the whirling smoke they could see the toiling gunners 
and the gleam of Sepoy bayonets beyond them, then 
the British soldiers made their leap. With a shout 
they charged on and over the guns, and through the 
lines behind, and Nana Sahib's force was utterly and 
finally crushed. Havelock had not a sabre to launch 
on the flying foe ; but his tired infantry, who had 
marched twenty miles, and fought without pause 
for. four hours, kept up the pursuit till the outer 
edge of Cawnpore was reached. Then Havelock 
halted them ; and, piling arms, the exhausted sol- 
diers dropped in sections where they stood, falling 
asleep on the bare ground, careless of food or tents. 

They were aroused long before daybreak, and 
through their ranks ran in whispers the story, grim 
and terrible, of the massacre which, by only a few 
hours, had cheated their splendid valour of its 
reward. 

How great was the valour, how stubborn the en- 
durance, shown thus far by Havelock's men is not 



CAWNPORE : THE MURDER GHAUT I 3 7 

easily realised. In nine days — betwixt July 7-16 
— they had, to quote their commander's words 
"marched under the Indian sun of July 126 miles, 
and fought four actions." What better proof of 
hardihood, valour, and discipline could be imagined ? 
But the British soldier is a queer compound, with 
very sudden and surprising alternations of virtue. 
When Cawnpore was won and plundered, immense 
stores of beer and spirits fell into the hands of the 
soldiers, and for a time it seemed as if Havelock's 
band of heroes would dissolve into a mere ignoble 
gang of drunkards. Havelock promptly ordered 
every drinkable thing in Cawnpore to be bought 
or seized. " If I had not done this," he wrote, " it 
would have required one half my force to keep the 
other half sober, and I should not have had a soldier 
in camp ! " 

Whether the terror of Havelock's advance on 
Cawnpore actually caused the massacre of the Eng- 
lish captives there may be doubted ; it certainly 
hastened it. Nana Sahib, to whom murder was a 
luxury, would no more have spared the women and 
the children than a tiger would spare a lamb lying 
under its paw. But even a tiger has its lazy moods, 
and, say, immediately after a full meal, is temporarily 
careless about fresh slaughter. Nana Sahib had 
supped full of cruelty, and was disposed, for a brief 
period at all events, to allow his captives to live. 
Moreover, some of the women in his own harem sent 



138 TI-IE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

him word they would slay themselves and their 
children if he murdered the memsahibs and their 
little ones. But on the night of July 15 the 
fugitives from Pandoo Nuddee reached Cawnpore, 
amongst them being Bala Rao, the Nana's brother 
and general, who brought from the fight a bullet 
in his shoulder, and a new argument for murder 
in his heart. 

In a council held between the Nana and his chief 
oflficials that night, the fate of the captives was dis- 
cussed. Teeka Sing understood British nature so ill 
that he argued Havelock's men would be robbed 
of their only motive for continuing their' advance 
on Cawnpore if the captives were slain. They might, 
he urged, risk the perils of a new battle for the 
sake of rescuing the captives, but not for the mere 
pleasure of burying them. That they might have 
the passion to avenge them did not enter into Teeka 
Sing's somewhat limited intelligence. Other chiefs 
argued, again, that' if the captives were allowed to 
live, they might prove very inconvenient witnesses 
against a good many people. 

It is probable that the strongest argument on the 
side of murder was the mere joy of killing somebody 
with a white face. Havelock's Fusileers and High- 

o 

landers declined to allow themselves to be killed; 
they were, in fact, slaying the Nana's Sepoys with 
disconcerting fury and despatch. But the heroes 
who had fled again and again before a British force 



CAWNPORE : THE MURDER GHAUT I 39 

one-fifth, their number, could revenge themselves in 
perfect security by slaying the helpless women and 
children imprisoned in the Bebeeghur. So the order 
for massacre went forth. 

From July i the captives, 210 in number, had 
been crowded into a small building containing two 
rooms, each 20 ft. by 10 ft., and an open court some 
fifteen yards square. In that suffering and helpless 
crowd were five men, guessed to have been Colonels 
Smith and Goldie, Mr. Thornhill, the judge of Futte- 
ghur, and two others. They had neither furniture 
nor bedding, nor even straw, and were fed daily on 
a scanty ration of native bread and milk. Two of 
the ladies were taken across each morning to the 
Nana's stables, and made to grind corn at a hand- 
mill for hours together. This was done, not for the 
sake of the scanty store of flour the poor captives 
ground out, but by way of insult. To the Eastern 
imagination, when a dead enemy's womankind grind 
corn in the house of his slayer, captivity has reached 
its blackest depths. The English ladies, according 
to native testimony, did not object to do the work 
of slaves in this fashion, as it, at least, enabled them 
to carry back a handful of flour to their hungry 
little ones. 

Sickness mercifully broke out amongst the cap- 
tives, and in a week eighteen women and seven 
children died. A native doctor kept a list of these, 
and after Havelock captured Cawnpore the list was 



I40 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

discovered. Months afterwards there was sad joy in 
many an English household when, on the evidence of 
this list, it was laiown that their loved ones had, in 
this way, anticipated and escaped the Nana's venge- 
ance. One poor wife, in the sadness of that captivity, 
gave birth to a little one, and in the native doctor's 
list of deaths is the pathetic record — a tragedy in 
each syllable—" An infant two days old." 

The evidence seems to show that during these 
terrible days the women were not exposed to 
outrage in the ordinary sense of that word, or to 
mutilation, but every indignity and horror which 
the Hindu imagination could plan short of that 
was emptied upon them, and some of the younger 
women, at least, were carried off to the harems of 
one or other of the Nana's generals. On the face 
of the earth there could have been at the time no 
other scene of ano-uish resembling that in the crowded 
and darkened rooms of the Bebeesi'hur, where so OToat 
a company of women and children, forsaken of hope, 
with the death of all their dearest behind them, sat 
waiting for death themselves. 

Nana Sahib was an epicure in cruelty, and was 
disposed to take his murders in dainty and lingering 
instalments. At four o'clock on the afternoon of 
July 15 he sent over some of his officers to the 
Bebeeghur, and bade the Englishmen come forth. 
They came out, the two colonels, the judge, a 
merchant named Greenaway, and his son, and with 



CAWNPOEE : THE MURDER GHAUT 1 4 I 

them a sixth, an Enghsh boy, fourteen years of 
age, nameless now, but apparently willing to share 
the perilous responsibilities of " being a man." Poor 
lad ! Motherless, his name all unknown, his father, 
perhaps, floating a disfigured corpse on the sliding 
current of the muddy Ganges, he appears for a 
moment, a slender, boyish figure, in the living 
frescoes of that grim tragedy, and then vanishes. 

Under the cool shade of a lime tree sat Nana 
Sahib, dark of face, gaudy of dress, and round him 
a cluster of his kinsmen and officers, Bala Rao 
among them, whose wounded shoulder was now to 
be avenged. Brief ceremony was shown to this 
little cluster of haggard and ragged sahibs. A 
grim nod from the Nana, a disorderly line of 
Sepoys with levelled muskets and retracted lips, 
and the six were shot down and their bodies cast 
on the dusty roadside for every passer-by to spit at. 

A little before five o'clock a woman from the 
Nana's household stepped inside the door of the 
Bebeeghur, and looked over the crowd of weary 
mothers and wan- faced children. A curious still- 
ness fell on the little company, while, in careless 
accents, the woman gave the dreadful order : they 
were " all to be killed " ! One English lady, with 
quiet courage, stepped up to the native officer who 
commanded the guard, and asked " if it was true 
they were all to be murdered." Even the Sepoys 
shrank from a crime so strange and wanton. The 



142 THE TALE OF THE GEE AT MUTINY 

officer bade the Englishwomen not to be afraid, 
and the woman from the Nana's harem was told 
roughly by the soldiers that her orders v/ould not 
be obeyed. 

It seemed monstrous indeed that an order which 
was to send 200 helpless human beings to death 
should be brought, like a message about some 
domestic trifle, on a servant-woman's lips. The 
messenger vanished. The Sepoys on guard con- 
sulted together and agreed that with their own 
hands, at least, they would not slay the prisoners. 
Accorduig to one account they were ordered by a 
new messenger to fire through the Avindows upon the 
• company of women and children, many now praying 
within. They obeyed the order to fire, and the 
sudden wave of flame and smoke, with the crash 
of twenty discharged muskets, swept over the heads 
of the captive crowd within. But the Sepoys, of 
design, fired high, and no one was wounded. 

When Havelock's men afterwards entered those 
rooms, one little detail bore mute witness to the 
use to which some of the ladies had turned the 
few minutes which followed the volley of the Sepoys. 
They evidently tore strips from their dresses, and 
with them tried to tie the door fast ; and still those 
broken strips of linen and silk were hanging from 
the door handles when Havelock's men, two days 
afterwards, entered Cawnpore. 

Crime never wants instruments, and Nana Sahib 



CAWNPORE : THE MURDER GHAUT 1 43 

soon found scoundrels willing to carry out liis orders. 
It was a little after five o'clock — -just when Stephen- 
son's Fusileers and Hamilton's Highlanders were 
sweeping over the bridge at Pandoo Nuddee — that 
five men, each carrying a tulwar, walked to the door 
of the Bebeeghur. Two were rough peasants; two 
belonged to the butcher's caste; one Avore the red 
uniform of the Nana's bodyguard. The five men 
entered, and the shuddering crowd of women and 
children was before them. The crowd, who watched 
as the door opened, saw standing erect on the thresh- 
old the English lady who had asked the native 
officer whether they were all to be killed. Then the 
door was closed, and over the scene that followed the 
horrified imagination refuses to linger. 

Wailing, broken shrieks, the sound of runninsr feet 
crept out on the shuddering air. Presently the door 
opened, and the man in the red uniform of the Nana's 
bodyguard came out with his sword broken short off 
at the hilt. There were 212 to be killed, and the 
strain on steel blades as well as on human muscles 
was severe ! 

He borrowed a fresh sword, and went back to his 
work, again carefully closing the door behind him. 
After a while he re-emerged once more with a broken 
blade, and, arming himself afresh, returned a third 
time to his dreadful business. It was dark when the 
live men — all alike now with reddened garments — 
came out and locked the door behind them, leaving 



144 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

that great company of wives and mothers and little 
children in the slaughter-house. The men had done 
their work but roughly, and all through the night, 
though no cry was heard in the Bebeeghur, yet 
sounds, as if sighs from dying lips, and the rustle as 
of struggling bodies, seemed to creep out into the 
darkness incessantly through its sullen windows and 
hard-shut doors. 

At eight o'clock the next morning the five men 
returned, attended by a few sweepers. They opened 
the door, and commenced to drag the nearer bodies, 
by their long tresses of hair, across the courtyard to 
the fatal well, hard by. Then, amongst the bodies 
lying prone over all the floor, there was a sudden 
stir of living things. Were the dead coming back to 
life? 

Native evidence, collected afterwards, reports that 
a few children and nearly a dozen women had con- 
trived to escape death by hiding under the bodies of 
the slain. They had lain in that dreadful conceal- 
ment all night, but when the five returned they crept 
out with pitiful cries. Some of these were slain 
without parley ; some ran like hunted animals round 
the courtyard, and then threw themselves down the 
well. One by one the victims were dragged out, 
stripped, and, many of them yet living, were flung 
into that dreadful grave. 

One native witness, quoted by Trevelyan, says, 
" There was a great crowd looking on ; they were 



CAWNPORE : THE MURDER GHAUT 1 45 

standing along the walls of the compound. They 
were principally city people and villagers. Yes, there 
were also Sepoys. Three boys were alive. They were 
fair children. The eldest, I think, must have been 
six or seven, and the youngest five years. They 
were running round the well (where else could they 
go to ?), and there was none to save them. No, 
none said a word, or tried to save them." The 
youngest of these children, a tender little fellow, 
lunatic with terror, broke loose and ran like a hare 
across the courtyard. He was captured by an un- 
sympathetic spectator, brought back, and flung down 
the well. 

It was two days after this, on July 17, that three 
men of the 78th entered the court, for Havelock was 
now in possession of Cawnpore, and the Nana was a 
fugitive. The whispers and gestures of the natives 
drew their attention to the shut door of the bun- 
galow. One of the Highlanders pushed open the 
door and stepped inside. " The next moment," to 
quote Archibald Forbes, "he came rushing out, his 
face ghastly, his hands working convulsively, his 
whole aspect, as he strove in vain to gasp out some 
articulate sounds, showing that he had seen some 
' dreadful sight." No living thing was in the place ; 
but the matting that covered the floor was one great 
sponge of blood, and he who had crossed it found 
himself, to borrow Burns's phrase, " red wat shod." 

Little pools of blood filled up each inequality in 

K 



14^ THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

the rough floor. It was strewn with pitiful relics, 
broken combs, pinafores, children's shoes, little hats, 
the leaves of books, fragments of letters. The plas- 
tered wall was hacked with sword-cuts, " not high up, 
as where men had fought, but low down and about 
the corners, as if a creature had crouched to avoid a 
blow." Long locks of hair were strewn about, severed, 
but not with scissors. 

There were no inscriptions on the walls, but many 
a pitiful record upon the scattered papers on the 
floor. A few childish curls marked " Ned's hair, 
with love ; " the fly-leaf of a Bible, with a loving 
inscription — giver and recipient now both dead; a 
prayer-book, pages splashed red where once praying 
eyes had lingered. The pages of one grimly appro- 
priate book — Drelincourt's "Preparation for Death" 
— were scattered over the whole floor. 

To write this story is a distress, to read it must be 
well-nigh an anguish. Yet we may well endure to 
know what our countrymen and countrywomen have 
suffered. Their sufferings are part of the price at 
which a great empire has been built. 

Into what a passion of fury — half generous, half 
devilish — the soldiers who looked on these things 
were kindled may well be imagined. It will be re- 
membered that Neill compelled some of the Sepoys 
captured at Cawnpore, and guilty of a share in this 
tragedy — high-caste Brahmins — to clean up, under 



CAWNPORE : THE MURDER GHAUT 1 47 

the whip, a few square inches of the blood-stained 
floor, and then immediately hanged them, burying 
them in a ditch afterwards. These Brahmins, that 
is, were first ceremonially defiled, and then exe- 
cuted. That was an inhumanity unworthy of the 
English name, which Lord Clyde promptly forbade. 

Nana Sahib had fled the palace. Principality, and 
power, and wealth, all had vanished. He was, like 
Cain, a fugitive on the face of the earth. In what 
disguises he hid himself, through what remote and 
lonely regions he wandered, where he died, or how, 
no man knows. His name has become an execration, 
his memory a horror. 

The Bebeeghur has disappeared. The site where 
it once stood is now a beautiful garden. In the 
centre of the garden, circled with a fringe of ever- 
sighing cypresses, is a low mound, with fence of open 
stonework. The circular space within is sunken, and 
upon the centre of the sunken floor rises the figure — 
not too artistic, unhappily — of an angel in marble, with 
clasped hands and outspread wings. On the pedestal 
runs the inscription : " Sacred to the perpetual 
memory of the great company of Christian people, 
chiefly women and children, who, near this spot, were 
cruelly massacred by the followers of the rebel Nana 
Doondoo Punth, of Bithoor, and cast, the dying and 
the dead, into the well below, on the 15 th day of 
July 1857." 



CHAPTER VI 

LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAWRENCE 

And ever upon tlie topmost roof our banner of England flew. 

— Tennyson. 

ON the night of May 30, 1857, tlie steps of the 
Residency at Lucknow witnessed a strange 
sight. On the uppermost steps stood a group of 
British officers in uniform. Sir Henry Lawrence was 
there, with his staff; Banks, the chief commissioner; 
Colonel Inglis, of the 32nd. The glare of a flaming 
house a hundred and fifty yards distant threw on the 
group a light as intense almost as noonday. Forty 
paces in front of the group stood a long line of 
Sepoys loading in swift silence. The light of the 
flames played redly on their dark faces, on their 
muskets brought quickly into position for capping. 
For weeks the great city had been trembling on the 
verge of revolt, and an officer of his staff had brought 
Lawrence news that gun-fire that night, nine o'clock, 
was to be the signal for the outbreak. 

Lawrence had taken all human precautions, and 
was familiar with such warnmgs as that now brought 
to him, and he sat doAvn with his staff to dinner with 
iron composure. At nine o'clock there rolled through 



LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAWRENCE 1 49 

the sultry darkness the sound of a gun, and silence 
fell for a moment on the dinner party. Nothing 
followed the roar of the gun. Lawrence leaned 
forward with a smile on his face, and said to the 
officer who brought the news, "Your friends are 
not punctual." 

At that moment there rose in sharp succession on 
the still night air the crack of a dozen muskets. 
Then came the sound of running feet, the confused 
shouts of a crowd. The Mutiny had come ! 

Lawrence, without a change of countenance, or- 
dered the horses, waiting ready saddled, to be brought 
round, and, followed by his staff, went out on to the 
Kesidency steps to wait for them. As they stood 
there red flames were breaking out at a score of 
points in the black mass of houses on which they 
looked. The air was full of tumult. An English 
bungalow only a hundred and fifty yards distant 
broke into flame, showing how near the mutineers 
were. 

At that moment, with the tramp of disciplined 
feet, a body of Sepoys came running up at the double 
out of the darkness, and swung into line facing the 
Residency steps. It was the native officer bringing 
up the Residency guard; and, saluting Captain 
Wilson, Lawrence's aide-de-camp, he asked "if the 
men should load." These men were known to be 
disloyal ; before the morning dawned, as a matter of 
fact, they were in open mutiny. Ought they to be 



150 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

treated as loyal, and permitted to load with the 
entire British staff of the city at the muzzles of their 
muskets ? Wilson reported the native officer's ques- 
tion to Lawrence. " Yes," said he quietly, " let them 
load," and the group on the Residency steps quietly 
watched while ramrods rang sharjDly in the musket 
barrels, and the gun-nipples were capped. The sound 
of ramrods falling on the leaden bullets was perfectly 
audible in the hush ; and, says Colonel Wilson, " I 
believe Sir Henry was the only man of all that group 
whose heart did not beat the quicker for it." 

Then there came a thrilling pause. These men 
had the entire British staff at Lucknow before them 
at point-blank distance ! A single gesture, a shout, 
and that line of muskets would have poured its 
deadly fire upon the group on the Residency steps, 
and with the sound of that one volley Lucknow 
must have fallen, and perhaps the course of history 
been changed. 

These brave men standing there under the very 
shadow of death knew this, and not a figure stirred ! 
Had there been the least sign of agitation or fear, 
perhaps the Sepoys would have fired. But the cool, 
steadfast bearing of that group of Englishmen put a 
strange spell on the Sepoys. Another moment of 
intensest strain, and the native officer gave a sharp 
word of command. The magic of discipline pre- 
vailed : the men swung round and marched off into 
the darkness. But the fate of Lucknow and a thou- 



LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAWRENCE 151 

sand Britisli lives hung on those few critical moments. 
It was the haughty, ice-cold courage of that heroic 
group on the Residency steps which, for the moment, 
averted a great disaster. 

Sir Henry Lawrence is the hero of the earlier 
stages of the siege of Lucknow, and it is difficult to 
imagine a loftier or more gallant character. Ho 
came of that sturdy, strong-brained North of Ireland 
stock, which has given to the British Empire so many 
gallant soldiers and famous administrators, so many 
great engineers and captains of labour. Lawrence's 
face, with its long features, thin-flowing beard, deep- 
set, meditative, not to say dreamy eyes, and high 
cheek bones, was an odd compound of, say, Don 
Quixote and Abraham Lincoln. His valour was 
" a sword of Spain, the ice-brook's temper " ; but he 
had better qualities than even valour of that fine 
edge. He was an administrator of the first order. 
His intellect had in it a curious penetrating quality, 
and perhaps his brain alone forecast, in its true scale, 
the great Mutiny which shook almost to its fall the 
British rule in India. His courtesy, his unselfishness 
his passionate scorn of injustice, his generous pity 
for the oppressed, gave a strange charm to Lawrence's 
character, while his meditative piety added gravity 
and depth to it. The whole interval between the 
tragedy of Cawnpore and the glory of Lucknow is 
to be measured by the single personality of Henry 
Lawrence. That he was of a different type from 



152 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

Wheeler, explains how Lucknow escaped while 
Cawnpore perished. 

The two cities are about forty-five miles distant 
from each other, Wheeler and Lawrence had each 
to face, practically, the same situation, and with 
resources not very unequal. Wheeler's credulous 
faith in his Sepoys flung away the last chance of 
the ill-fated British in Cawnpore. It was this which 
made him gather them within those thin lines of 
earth, shelterless from shot or sunstroke, and 
without supplies, where no fate except death or 
surrender was possible. Lawrence, with surer in- 
sight, measured the problem before him. He 
chose wisely the spot where the British must make 
their stand for existence. He gathered within the 
lines he selected all the treasure and warlike re- 
sources of the city, with supplies that a siege of 
five months did not exhaust. And his splendid 
foresight and energy saved Lucknow. 

There is no space to tell here in detail the tale 
of the noble courage and energy with which Law- 
rence kept the seething and turbulent city from 
revolt through May and June. The mere garrison 
figures of Lucknow show Lawrence's position. He 
had 700 Europeans on whom he could rely. There 
were 7000 Sepoys, all potential, and highly probable 
mutineers. Beyond this was a great turbulent and 
fanatical city, with a population of, say, 700,000, a 
magazine waiting to explode at the touch of a match. 



LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAWRENCE I 5 3 

The peril was certain in its character, but was 
uncertain in scale, and time, and form. Lawrence 
had to arm himself against that vague, formless, 
yet terrific peril, without letting those who watched 
him closely and keenly discover that he was con- 
scious of its existence. He had to hide an anxious 
brain behind a cheerful face ; to prepare minutely 
for swift-coming and desperate war, while wearing 
the dress, and talking the language of peace ; to 
turn a hospitable Residency into a fortress ; and 
yet keep open doors and an open table. And he 
did it all ! When, the morning after Chinhut, the 
Residency was closely and furiously besieged, it 
was found to be provisioned, organised, and armed 
for a stern and obstinate and, in the end, successful 
defence ! 

Lawrence read the whole position of affairs so 
truly that his forecast of events has in it a gleam 
of something like prophecy, or of magic. " He told 
me," says Colonel Wilson, " that nearly the whole 
army would go, but not, he thought, the Sikhs ; 
that in every native regiment there was a residuum 
of loyal Sepoys, and he meant, if possible, to retain 
these — as he actually did. If Cawnpore held out, 
Lucknow would be unassailed ; but if Cawnpore 
fell, Lucknow would be hard pressed, and no succour 
could reach the city before the middle of August ; 
that the outbreak would remain a revolt of the 
Sepoys, and not a rising of the people." 



154 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

Lawrence's own policy, meanwhile, was to fight 
for time. Every hour the Mutiny could be post- 
poned lessened its chances of success. " Time," he 
writes in his diary on May i8, "is everything just 
now ; time, firmness, promptness, conciliation, pru- 
dence." But Lawrence had many difficulties in carry- 
ing out that wise policy, some of them created by 
the divided judgments of his own staff. Mr. Gubbins, 
the financial commissioner, in particular, vehemently 
mistrusted Lawrence's mild handling of the Sepoys. 
Gubbins was clever, audacious, quick-witted, fatally 
over- quick, perhaps, in judgment, with a gift for 
giving advice in confident — not to say imperious — 
accents, which his official superiors found somewhat 
trying. He valued his own advice, too, so highly 
that he could not forgive the dulness in his 
superiors which failed to discern its excellence, or 
the hesitation Avhich lingered in putting it into 
practice. He was perpetually urging Lawrence to 
disarm and expel all the native troops in Luck- 
now. Yet Lawrence's milder policy was justified by 
events. Some seven hundred Sepoys remained true to 
their salt, and served through the great siege with 
a devotion and a courage beyond praise. "Neither 
temptation nor threats from their comrades with- 
out," says Fayrer, " or hardships and privation 
within, could induce them to desert. There is 
nothing in the history of the Sepoy army more 
creditable or honourable than their behaviour." 



LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAWRENCE 1 55 

Lawrence had otlier troubles with the Europeans 
in Lucknow. An indiscreet editor in Lucknow pub- 
lished some alarmist articles of a singularly mis- 
chievous character, and Lawrence sent for him, and 
warned him that, if he continued to write in a fashion 
calculated to provoke mutiny, he would suppress his 
paper. But Lawrence knew human nature too well 
to believe that mere threats would keep a foolish 
editor from committing folly. A few days after- 
wards, happening to ride by the newspaper office, he 
suddenly drew rein, and said to his staff, " Let us go 

in and edit the paper for Mr. ." He entered, 

said to the astonished editor, " Mr. , to show you 

I bear no ill-will, I am come to write you a leading 
article ; " and, sitting down, dashed off an article ex- 
pounding the resources of the Government for meet- 
ing and putting down a revolt. The article acted as 
a tonic on native and European opinion in the city ; 
but it also captured the editor. 

Lawrence had not a very keen sense of humour, 
but occasionally humour — of a grim sort — broke out 
from him. A Hindu of some rank advised that a 
number of monkeys should be collected in the 
Eesidency, and be attended and fed by high-caste 
Brahmins. This would ensure the favour of all the 
Hindu divinities, and would make the English popu- 
lar. Lawrence listened gravely, then said, " Your 
advice is good. Come," he said, rising and taking 
his hat, " I will show you my monkeys." He led the 



I 5 6 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

way to a battery wliicli had just been completed; 
and laying his hand on an i8-pounder gun, said, 
" See ! here is one of my monkeys. That " — pointing 
to a pile of shot — " is his food, and this " — laying his 
hand on the shoulder of a sentry of the 32nd, who 
stood at attention close by — " is the man who feeds 
them. Now go and tell your friends of my 
monkeys ! " 

The serene quality of Lawrence's courage is shown 
by a letter he writes to Raikes on May 30 : " We are 
pretty jolly . . . but we are in a funny position. . . . 
We are virtually besieging four regiments — in a quiet 
way — v/ith 300 Europeans. I . . . reside in canton- 
ments guarded by the gentlemen we are besieging." 
That very night, as it happened, the outbreak came ! 

On the last day of June the disastrous fight at 
Chinhut brought affairs at Lucknow to a crisis. The 
revolted regiments from Eastern Oude were march- 
ing on Lucknow, and Lawrence, acting on the one 
principle of British war in India — of striking and 
never waiting to be struck — marched out to crush the 
approaching mutinous regiments. His little force 
consisted of 300 of the 32nd, 230 more or less loyal 
Sepoys, 36 British volunteers on horseback, 120 
native cavalry, and 10 guns, of which six were 
manned by Sepoys. There was grave doubt as to 
how the native artillery would behave ; but Lawrence 
said, " We must try and ' blood ' them." 

As it happened, Lawrence was completely deceived 



LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAWRENCE I 5 / 

as to the strength of the enemy. He reckoned they 
might number 5000; they were nearer 15,000, with 
not less than thirty guns. By some accident, too, 
the 32nd were marched out without having broken 
their fast, and, marching eight miles under the glare 
of an Indian sun, were exhausted before they fired a 
shot. 

The day at Chinhut, in brief, was one of blunders 
and disasters. " Everything," says Fayrer, " was 
against us." The force started late, and without ade- 
quate preparation. The supplies of food and water 
never came up. The men of the 32nd had to attack 
when exhausted by heat, thirst, and fatigue, and want 
of food. The native artillerymen deserted ; the Sikh 
cavalry fled. The one formidable gun the British 
had, an 8-inch howitzer, was thrown out of action 
owing to the elephant that drew it taking fright. 
The British, in addition, were badly armed. Many 
of their muskets would not go off. In the confusion 
of the retreat an officer called on a private of the 
32nd by name to turn round and fire on the enemy. 
" I will do so, sir, if you wish," said the man, " but it's 
no use! I have snapped six caps already and the 
piece won't go off." The Sepoys, as it happened, 
were armed with new and clean muskets. 

The enormous number of the Sepoys enabled them 
to outflank the scanty British force, and nothing re- 
mained but retreat. There were many individual 
acts of gallantry ; but, in broken, desperately fight- 



158 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

ing clusters, the 32nd had to fall back, many of the 
men dropping from exhaustion or sunstroke while 
they tried to fight. An officer in the battle has 
described the huge mass of the Sepoys as it pressed 
on the flank of the retreating British. " The plain," 
he says, " was one moving mass of men. Regiment 
after regiment of the Sepoys poured steadily towards 
us, the flanks covered with a foam of skirmishers. 
They came on in quarter-distance columns, the stan- 
dards waving in their places, and everything per- 
formed as steadily as possible. A field-day on parade 
could not have been better." Under the terrific fire 
poured on their flank the gallant 32nd simply melted 
away. Their colonel. Case, a splendid soldier, fell 
desperately wounded, and one of the officers ran to 
assist him. "Your place," Case told him, "is with 
your men. Never mind me. Leave me to die, but 
stand by your men." 

Lawrence rode, hat in hand, wherever the fire was 
fiercest, cheering the men; but again and again he 
wrung his hands, and was heard to say, " My God ! I 
have brought them to this ! " A great body of native 
cavalry was about to charge down on the clusters of 
broken redcoats, when the thirty-six volunteers on 
horseback rode at them with such fury that the 
whole hostile mass was broken, and, with its two 
guns and sea of glittering sabres, was actually driven 
off in flisfht ! The retreatinsr column had reached the 
iron bridge ; the Sepoys, outnumbering them by hun- 



LUCKNOW AND SIR HENHY LAWRENCE I 59 

dreds to one, were pressing on, when Lawrence saved 
them by a flash of warlike genius. 

The British gun ammunition was exhausted, but 
Lawrence ordered the empty guns to be planted 
across the bridge, and the gunners to stand beside 
them with lighted port-fires, and before the menace 
of those unloaded guns the Sepoy pursuit was 
arrested ! Out of his little European force no fewer 
than 1 12 men and five officers of the 32nd were slain. 
The memory of those gallant men poisoned Henry 
Lawrence's dying moments. He blamed himself 
because, as he said, he " had been moved by 
the fear of man to undertake so hazardous an 
enterprise." 

How darkly that night settled down on Lucknow 
may be imagined. The scene when the broken 
troops, blackened with dust, staggering with ex- 
haustion, bloody from wounds, came streaming into 
the Residency, was one of the wildest confusion. 
It seemed as if everything was lost. The victorious 
Sepoys might carry the Residency with one breath- 
less rush. " The end of all things seemed to have 
come," says Dr. Fayrer — who was busy dressing 
wounds amid all the tumult. "The poor ladies," 
he adds, "who, like others, were anticipating im- 
mediate death, were perfectly calm, and showed 
great fortitude." Lady Inglis has told how she 
" watched our poor soldiers returning — the most 
mournful sight. They were straggling in by twos 



l6o THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

and threes ; some riding, some on guns, some sup- 
ported by tlieir comrades." "Almost every other 
cavahy vohmteer," says another eye-witness, "was 
encumbered with two, three, or even four foot- 
soldiers; one perhaps holding his hand, another 
laying fast hold on the crupper, or the tail'^f the 
horse, or the stirrup, or on all together." 

Lady Inglis tells the story of how the news of 
Colonel Case's death was brought to his wife. " Mrs. 
Case came up to me and said, ' Oh, Mrs. Inglis, go to 
bed. I have just heard that your husband and mine 
are both safe.' I said, ' Why, I did not know Colonel 
Case went out.' Just then John (Colonel Inglis) 
came in. He was crying, and after kissing me 
turned to Mrs. Case and said, ' Poor Case ! ' Never 
shall I forget the cry of agony from the poor 
widow." 

It was at a crisis like this that the gallant and 
masterful spirit of Henry Lawrence shone out. The 
Sepoys had a saying that " when Lawrence Sahib had 
looked once down to the ground, and once up to the 
skiy, and stroked his beard, he knew what to do." 
He had, that is, in an unrivalled degree, the faculty 
of seeing into the heart of a difficulty, and the twin 
faculty of swift decision. The disaster of Chinhut 
had changed the whole situation. Lawrence had 
armed and garrisoned a cluster of castellated build- 
ings, called the Mutchee Bhawan, about a thousand 
yards from the Residency, for the purpose of over- 



LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAWRENCE l6l 

awing the city. But his losses at Chinhut made it 
difEcult to hold the Residency, and impossible to 
hold both the Residency and the Mutchee BhaAvan ; 
and on the morning of July i, from a rough sema- 
phore on the roof of the Residency, a message was 
signalled to the Mutchee Bhawan, " Retire to-night at 
twelve. Blow up well." 

Colonel Palmer, of the 48th Native Infantry, was 
in command at the Mutchee Bhawan ; he called his 
officers together, and laid his plans with perfect skill 
and coolness. There was a magazine consisting of 
250 barrels of gunpowder and nearly 1,000,000 cart- 
ridges ; these were put together in a huge pile ; every 
gun that could not be carried off was spiked, and at 
midnight the garrison filed silently out, and the fuse 
was lighted. The garrison reached the Residency 
gate without meeting an enemy, and just as the last 
man entered, with a shock as of an earthquake and a 
flame that for a moment lit up half the city, Mutchee 
Bhawan blew up. It turned out that a private of the 
32nd was left drunk and sound asleep in the building. 
He was blown up, of course, but the next morning 
was standing, stark naked, hammering at the Resi- 
dency gate, shouting, " Arrah, then, open your 

gates!" 

Lawrence had thus concentrated all his force within 
the lines of that scanty patch of soil which was to 
witness a defence as heroic and stubborn as that of 
Saragossa against the French, or of Jerusalem against 



1 62 THE TALE OF THE GEE AT MUTINY 

the Romans; and which for the next eighty-eight 
days — till Havelock's Highlanders, that is, with 
blackened faces and crimsoned bayonets came 
streaming through the Bailey Guard — was to be 
ringed with the fire of hostile guns. 

What was called the Residency was really an irre- 
gular cluster of houses and gardens, covering an area 
of about thirty-three acres, looking down from a 
slight ridge upon the river Goomtee. In the centre 
stood the Residency itself, a lofty three-storeyed build- 
ing with many windows and wide-circling verandahs : 
a spacious and comfortable residence, but singularly 
ill adapted for the purposes of w;ar. The houses and 
gardens around it had been woven together with 
trenches and earthworks, with light batteries sprinkled 
at regular intervals on each front, and the external 
walls of the houses along the outer fronts were pierced 
with loopholes. But in the whole position there was 
not a defence anywhere that could resist artillery fire. 

The whole position formed a rough, irregular pen- 
tagon. What may be called the northern front looked 
down a gentle slope, and across a line of native shops 
called the Captan Bazaar, to the river, the north- 
western angle being prolonged, like the horn of a 
rhinoceros, to include a little point of rising ground 
occupied by a residence known as Innes's house. 

The exterior defence was divided into seventeen 
posts, each post having its commandant and its tiny 
garrison of soldiers or of civilians, or of the few 



LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAWRENCE 1 63 

Sepoys still faithful to their salt. And each post had 
to fight, like Hal o' the Wynd, for " its ain hand " ; 
to dig its own trenches, drive its own mines, make 
sorties on its own account, and repel assaults with its 
own muskets and bayonets as best it could. One 
man from each post was detailed to fetch each morn- 
ing provisions for the day, but, for the rest, the little 
cluster of smoke-blackened heroes held their post 
with desperate valour on their own account, and 
without communication with any other post. There 
were no reliefs. Every man was on continuous duty 
day and night, and if he cast himself down for a brief 
and broken slumber, it was with his musket by his 
side, and without undressing. 

Innes's post, at the extreme north-west angle, was 
commanded by Lieutenant Loughnan with a little 
garrison of clerks and men of the 32nd. Next came 
a stretch of earthworks called the North Curtain, 
under Colonel Palmer. The Redan, a projecting 
battery of three guns, was held by Lieutenant Law- 
rence, of the 32nd, with a few men of his regiment. 
The hospital, an unsheltered post, was held by Lieu- 
tenant Langmore; the Bailey Guard adjoining it by 
Lieutenant Aitken, with some Sepoys of the 13th 
Native Infantry. The post was armed with two 
9-pounders and a howitzer, and the Sepoys regarded 
the tiny battery entrusted to them with peculiar pride. 

Following down the east face. Dr. Fayrer's house 
was held by Captain Weston, with some Sepoy pen- 



1 64 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

sioners; Sago's house was in charge of Lieutenant 
Clery, of the 32nd., with some men of that regiment. 
The Financial Commissioner's office was held by 
Captain Saunders, with a mixed garrison of uncove- 
nanted clerks and men of the 32nd; the Judicial 
Commissioner's office, or Germon's post, as it was 
called, was in charge of Captain Germon, and a batch 
of Sepoys and clerks. Anderson's garrison — a two- 
storeyed house at the south-east angle of the position 
— was held by Captain Anderson and a cluster of the 
32nd, and some volunteers. 

The Cawnpore battery formed the extreme east of 
the southern face. This was armed with three light 
guns, and was so completely under the enemy's fire 
that, when that fire was in full blast, no man could 
live beneath it, and the commander of this post was 
changed every day. The Sikhs' square formed the 
western angle of the south front, and was held by 
Captain Harding, with some Sikh cavalry. Gubbins' 
battery formed the southern extremity of the west 
front ; it had a mixed garrison of Sepoy pensioners, 
some men of the 32nd, and some native levies raised 
by Mr. Gubbins. The Racket-court, the Slaughter- 
house, the Sheep-pen, and the Church formed the 
defences of the west front, and were held chiefly by 
men of the commissariat department. The Residency 
itself was held by a company of the 84th, under Cap- 
tain Lowe, as a reserve, though only once during the 
siege was it called out. 



LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAWRENCE 1 65 

Above the Residency flew, in liaughty challenge to 
the whole world, the flag of England. That flag pro- 
voked in a quite curious degree the wrath of the 
mutineers. Every gun that could be brought to bear 
on it pelted it with shot, and again and again the 
stafl' was carried away. But the damage was instantly 
repaired, and through the whole of that desperate 
siege, while the tumult of the fight raged on every 
face of the entrenchments — 

" Ever aloft on the palace roof the old banner of England blew ! " 

Upon this patch of soil, a little over thirty acres in 
extent, ringed with trenches and palisades, with loop- 
holed house-walls and low earthworks, were gathered 
some 3000 human beings. Of these, more than 600 
were European women and children ; nearly 700 were 
native servants, non-combatants; another 700 were 
Sepoys, of somewhat dubious loyalty. The real fight- 
ing strength of the garrison consisted of 535 men of 
the 32nd, 50 of the 84th, 89 artillerymen, 100 British 
officers — mainly escapees from revolted regiments — 
and 153 civilians, mostly clerks, who now suddenly 
had to exchange the pen for the musket and 
bayonet. 

About 900 British, that is, constituted the true 
fighting force of Lucknow, and these 900 had to be 
distributed amongst seventeen " posts," or batteries, 
and round the 2500 yards, or thereabouts, of con- 
stantly threatened front. This gave an average of, 



1 66 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

roughly, fifty men to each post, a number, of course, 
which grew less every day. 

The position had one remarkable feature. The 
Residency resembled nothing so much as a low 
island, set in a sea of native houses. Lawrence, with 
wise prevision, had attempted to clear each front of 
the Residency, and from June 12 he had some 600 
workmen employed on this task. Nawabs' palaces 
and coolies' huts alike were attacked with pickaxe 
and gunpowder; but the undertaking was stupen- 
dous, and practically only the upper storeys of these 
houses were destroyed, so that they could hot sweep 
the British entrenchments with their fire. But the 
lower walls were left standing, and these afforded 
perfect cover to the Sepoys, and enabled them to 
carry on their mining operations undetected. 

Along the eastern face these houses were at dis- 
tances from the British entrenchments ranging from 
twenty-five to fifty yards ; on the southern face they 
came up to within thirteen yards of the Residency 
front, an interval, say, as wide as a city lane ! So 
close were the two hostile lines for those eighty- 
eight desperate days, that the British could easily 
overhear the talk of the Sepoys; and when bullets 
ceased to fly across the narrow space between, ex- 
pletives — couched in shrill Hindu or in rough Anglo- 
Saxon — naturally took their place ! 

The strength of the mutineers was a varying and 
uncertain quantity. Sometimes it was wildly guessed 



LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAWRENCE 1 67 

to have risen to 100,000, at other times to have sunk 
to 30,000. Colonel Inglis, in his official report of 
the siege, after speaking of "the terrific and inces- 
sant fire day and night," says " there could not have 
been less than 8000 men firing at one time into our 
position." This describes the common experience of 
eighty-eight days. And yet this great host, with 
all their constant tempest of fire, their repeated 
assaults, their innumerable mines, never gained a 
single foot of that ground above which flew the flag 
of England ! 

Sir Henry Lawrence's keen and forecasting intel- 
lect made the triumphant defence of Lucknow 
possible, but in that defence he himself took the 
briefest share. The siege practically began on July i. 
Lawrence had taken up his quarters in a room in 
the Residency, which gave him a complete view 
of the enemy, but was also peculiarly open to their 
fire. On that first day the Sepoys threw an 8-inch 
shell into the room where Lawrence was sitting, but 
he escaped without injury. He was entreated to 
change his quarters, but answered, with a laugh, he 
did not think the enemy had a gunner good enough 
to put a second shot through that same window ! 
He was still pressed, however, to change, and at last 
he consented to do so "when he had arranged for 
moving his papers." 

At 8 P.M. on July 2 Lawrence was lying on his 
bed in this room, with Colonel Wilson sitting beside 



1 68 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

him writing down some instructions from his lips. 
Lawrence's nephew, George, was recHning on a bed 
a few feet distant from his uncle ; a coolie sat on 
the floor pulling the punkah. Suddenly, with a 
terrific rush, a second shell from that fatal howitzer 
broke into the room and exploded there. As George 
Lawrence describes it, " There was an instant's dark- 
ness, and a kind of red glare, and a blast as of 
thunder. I found myself uninjured, though covered 
with bricks from top to toe." The very clothes were 
torn off Wilson's body, but he, too, was uninjured. 
Lawrence was the only member of the group struck 
by the exploding shell, and he was mortally 
wounded, the whole of the lower part of his body 
being shattered. 

Colonel Wilson tells graphically the story of the 
exploding shell, the sheet of flame, the blast of 
sound, the dust, the thick darkness, the strangling 
smoke. He was himself thrown on the floor, and 
lay for a few moments stunned. Staggering to his 
feet, he cried, " Sir Henry, are you hurt ? " " Twice 
I thus called without any answer ; the third time 
he said, in a low tone, ' I am killed.' " When the 
dust cleared away, it was seen that the coverlet 
on Lawrence's bed, a moment before white, was 
now crimsoned with his blood. He died on the 
morning of July 4, and the story of the thirty-six 
hours between his wound and his death is strangely 
pathetiCo 



LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAWRENCE 1 69 

Fayrer, avIio was the resident surgeon, was brought 
hurriedly in, and Lawrence in a whisper asked 
him how lonsf he had to Kve. A frasrment of 
the shell had struck the hip and comminuted the 
upper part of the thigh-bone. The wound was 
plainly fatal ; and as the walls of the room in which 
Lawrence lay were shaking continually to the stroke 
of the enemy's round-shot, the dying man was carried 
to the verandah of Dr. Fayrer's house, and there lay 
through the night, while life ebbed away. The 
Sepoys, somehow, got to know that Lawrence was 
lying under this particular verandah, and they 
turned on it what Fayrer describes as a "most 
fiendish fire of round-shot and musketry." Through 
it all Lawrence kept the most perfect composure. 
He named his successor, Major Banks, and dictated 
exact and most luminous instructions as to the 
conduct of the siege. No finer proof of his clear, 
tenacious, forecasting intellect can be imagined than 
is supplied by the counsels which, whispered with 
dying breath, he gave to those on whom the re- 
sponsibility of the defence must rest. Lawrence 
thought of everything and foresaw everything. The 
whole tactics of defence — how to keep the English 
members of the garrison in health, how to use the 
Sepoys, how to economise the provisions. "Entrench, 
entrench," was the burden of his whispered counsels, 
urged with dying lips. "Let every man," he said, 
" die at his post, but never make terms." Only when 



I/O THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

he mentioned his wife's name did his iron composure 
fail, and he wept those rare, reluctant tears which 
strong men know. He wished to partake of the 
Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The service was 
held in the open verandah, the sound of the chap- 
lain's voice being broken by the incessant crackle 
of hostile muskets and the crash of cannon-ball. 
Brave men knelt with unshamed tears by Lawrence's 
bedside, and partook of the Sacrament with him. 

After it was over the dying man begged them to 
kiss him. The whole story, indeed, recalls that 
scene in the cockpit of the Victory, and the 
dying Nelson's " Kiss me, Hardy ! " " Bury me," 
said Lawrence, " without any fuss, and in the same 
grave with any men of the garrison who may die at 
that time." Then, records his biographer, " speaking 
rather to himself than to those about him," he 
framed his own immortal epitaph, a sentence which 
deserves to be remembered as long as Nelson's 
great signal itself, and which, indeed, has the same 
key-word : " Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried 
to do his duty. May God have mercy on him." It 
is not so well known that Lawrence wished a verse 
of Scripture should be added to his epitaph. To the 
chaplain, Harris, he said, "This text I should like, 
' To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgive- 
nesses, though we have rebelled against Him.'" 
" It was," he added, with a sudden touch of loving 
memory, " on my dear wife's tomb." 



LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAWRENCE 171 

He was buried at nightfall The combat was 
raging fiercely along each front of the Residency's 
defences, and not an officer could follow the general 
to his grave. Four men of the 32nd were detailed 
to carry his body to its last rough resting-place. 
Before they lifted the couch on which it lay, one 
soldier drew down the sheet, and stooping, kissed 
with rough and quivering lips the dead man's fore- 
head, and each man of the party followed his ex- 
ample. What better sign of soldierly honour could 
be imagined? Lawrence's burial curiously recalls 
that of Sir John Moore at Corunna. He, too, was 
buried, according to somewhat inaccurate tradition 
"darkly, at the dead of night," and had for his 
requiem the thunder of the foeman's guns. 

The story of the siege is, in the main, one of 
personal combats; of the duels of hostile sharp- 
shooters; of desperate fighting underground in the 
mines; of sorties by the few against the many; 
of the assaults of thousands repulsed by scores. As 
a type of the long-enduring courage with which 
individual "posts" were held may be taken the 
single fact that Captain Anderson, whose residence 
formed what was called " Anderson's post," and who 
had a garrison of only twenty men, held his position 
for five months, though a battery of nine 9-pounder 
guns was playing upon it almost day and night ! 

The standing orders were, " Keep under cover, be 
always on the alert, and never fire a shot unless you 



172 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

can see your man." But it was very difficult to 
enforce tlie first clause of those instructions, at least. 
Lady Inglis tells how she once personally remon- 
strated with a too daring private of the 32nd for 
exposing himself too rashly, and reminded him of 
the "instructions." "Yes," he said, "but it's not 
the way of Englishmen to fight behind walls ! " 

As a matter of fact, the sorties were incessant and 
most daring, and were commonly got up by small 
independent parties, who wished to clear out a house 
held by the enemy, or silence a gun that proved too 
tormenting. " The local sorties," says Innes, " were 
made generally by parties of not more than half-a- 
dozen men." They would choose their own leader, 
creep out close to the site of some hostile gun or 
picket, dash on it, spike the gun, kill a few of 
the enemy, send the others flying, and -return in 
triumph ! 

In the more regular sorties an engineer officer 
and a sergeant leading would run out, carrying a 
bag of gunpowder or a couple of hand grenades. 
If the door of the attacked house was open, grenades 
were thrown in. If it were shut they drove in a 
bayonet, or screwed a gimlet in its wood, suspended 
a bag of powder to it, and lit the fuse. The moment 
the crash came the stormers charged into the build- 
ing, bayoneted the Sepoys holding it, placed another 
bag of gunpowder on the floor, lit the fuse, and fell 
back, the house five minutes afterwards flying up 



LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAWRENCE 1 73 

in fragments into the air. So expert did the men 
become in these house attacks that they learned the 
art of always going to the right, not the left, of a 
doorway or passage, so that they could fire into it 
without exposing the whole body. 

This sort of fighting naturally brought the more 
gallant spirits to the front. A private of the 32nd, 
called Cooney, played a great part in these indepen- 
dent combats. With a single comrade he charged 
into an enemy's battery, shouting, as he leaped over 
the ridge of earth, " Right and left, extend ! " so that 
the Sepoys imagined a strong body was following, 
and fled precipitately, leaving the ingenious Cooney 
and his comrade to spike the guns at leisure ! 

Captain Birch says : " Cooney's exploits were mar- 
vellous. He was backed by a Sepoy named Kandiel, 
who simply adored him. Single-handed, and with- 
out any orders, Cooney would go outside our position, 
and he knew more about the enemy's movements 
than anybody else. Over and over again he was put 
into the guard-room for ' disobedience of orders,' 
and as often let out when there was fighting to be 
done. On one occasion, he surprised one of the 
enemy's batteries into which he crawled, followed by 
his faithful Sepoy, bayoneting four men, and spik- 
ing the guns. He was often wounded, and several 
times left his bed to volunteer for a sortie." Cooney 
was an Irishman, and loved fighting for its own sake. 
He fell in a sortie made after Havelock's relief. 



174 THE TALE OF THE GKEAT MUTINY 

Fayrer, the Residency surgeon, combined "witla 
equal energy the somewhat contradictory duties of 
inflicting wounds and of healing them. He worked 
with tireless energy, attending to the sick and 
wounded in the Residency itself. But he records, 
" I have constant opportunity of using my guns 
and rifles from the roof of my house, or from the 
platform in front of it." And when this indefatigable 
doctor was not going his round among the sick and 
dying, he was to be found on his house-roof bringing 
down Sepoys with the deadly skill he had learned 
in the jungle against tigers and deer. 

The best shot on the British side was Lieutenant 
Sewell, who, happy in the possession of a double- 
barrelled Enfield rifle, from a loophole on the top 
of the brigade mess, which commanded a thorough- 
fare through the Sepoy position, bagged his men 
as a good sportsman might bag pheasants in a 
crowded cover. But the Sepoys, too, had their 
marksmen, whose accuracy was deadly, and whose 
exploits won from the British garrison the nick- 
names of " Jim the Rifleman " and " Bob the Nailer." 
"Bob the Nailer," from his perch high up in what 
was called Johannes' house, wrought deadly mischief. 
The British at last paid him the compliment of 
levelling a howitzer at him, and dropping a shell 
into his eyrie. But shells were vain. It was dis- 
covered afterwards that " Bob the Nailer," when 
he saw that the gun was about to fire, dropped 



LUCKNOW AND SIR HENEY LAWRENCE 175 

down into a sheltered room, to emerge, as soon as 
the shell had exploded, with his fatal rifle once 
more. 

Once a dash was made at Johannes' house, and 
its garrison slaughtered, but " Bob the Nailer " 
escaped, and there was not time to blow up the 
house. Later in the siege a mine was run under his 
perch, and Johannes' house, crowded with Sepoys, 
with "Bob the Nailer" at its summit, was blown 
into space. 

There were moments in the siege when, naturally, 
the spirits of many in the garrison sank. The children 
were dying from want of air, of exercise, of whole- 
some food. They shrank into mere wizen-faced old 
men — tiny skeletons with tightened, parchment-like 
skin, instead of round, cherub-like faces. Scurvy 
tainted the blood of the unfortunate garrison. 
Sleeplessness and the ever-present atmosphere of 
danger shook their nerves. Men stole out day after 
day, at the risk of their lives, to gather the leaves 
of a cruciferous plant, whose green leaves, unscorched 
by the flame of powder, could be seen amongst the 
ruins. A rank and dreadful stench of decaying 
bodies hung over the shot-tormented Eesidency, 
and poisoned the very air. Lady Inglis tells how 
the ladies held rueful debate among themselves as 
to the lawfulness of taking their own lives if the 
Residency fell. 

Amongst the Sepoys within the Residency, again, 



1/6 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

as tlie few weeks grew into months and no relief 
came, there spread a conviction that the fate of the 
sahibs was sealed, and there were many desertions. 
Sixteen went off in a body one night, headed by 
a Eurasian with the very British name of " Jones." 
They left the post they held open to the enemy, 
and scribbled on the walls in several places the 
explanation, "Because we have no opium." Jones 
and his fellow-deserters, it is not unsatisfactory to 
know, were shot by the Sepoys. 

One of the ugly features of the siege was that 
several European renegades — amongst thern at least 
one Englishman — were fighting on the side of the 
mutineers. Rees says that at the battle of Chinhut 
a European — "a handsome-looking man, well buUt, 
fair, about twenty-five years of age, with light mous- 
tache, and wearing the undress uniform of a Euro- 
pean cavalry officer" — headed a cavalry charge on 
the men of the 32nd. He might have been a Russian, 
but was vehemently suspected of being an English- 
man, who had forsaken both his faith and his race. 
His name was even whispered, and Rees adds that he 
was of good family. Two of his cousins were fighting 
valiantly in the Residency against the rebels, a third 
was wounded at Agra, a fourth held a high military 
appointment. Yet this apostate was recognised lay- 
ing a gun against the Residency ! His shrift would 
have been particularly short had he fallen into British 
hands. The British privates in the Residency, too, 



LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAWRENCE 1 7/ 

were kindled to a yet higher temperature of wrath 
by hearing the bands of the Sepoy regiments playing 
— as if in irony — " God save the Queen " under the 
shelter of the ruined buildings that came almost up 
to the line of the British entrenchments. 

But on the whole the average Briton is apt to be 
grimly cheerful when a good fight is in progress, and 
even this dreadful siege was not without its humours. 
Thus Rees tells how, on the night of July 26, the 
men of his post were spreading themselves out in 
the chorus of " Cheer, Boys, cheer," with the utmost 
strength of their voices, when an alarm was given at 
the front. They dashed out, and, with the unfinished 
syllables of that chorus yet on their lips, found them- 
selves in the tumult and fury of a desperate assault. 
After the fight was over they returned and finished 
their interrupted song I 

Innes, again, relates how, when a long mine of the 
enemy had been seized, and two officers were explor- 
ing its darkness, they heard the earth fall in behind 
them. One of the two, famous for his resonant 
laugh, shouted with a burst of merriment, "What 
fun ! They are cutting us off," and turned round 
gaily to charge on his foes ! 

Danger, in a word, had become an inspiring jest 
to these brave spirits. " Sam " Lawrence, who com- 
manded the Redan, was famous for the cheerful 
view he always took of affairs. It was known that 
the Sepoys had several mines converging on the pro- 

M 



178 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

jecting horn of the Eedan, and Lawrence, as uncon- 
querably jolly as Mark Tapley himself, expressed his 
view of the situation to his brigadier by saying, with 
a laugh, that " he and his men expected very shortly 
to be up amongst the little birds ! " 

On June 14, Fayrer records, " If we can believe our 
enemies, we are the last Englishmen in the country." 
This might or might not be the case ; but the garri- 
son determined grimly that, if they were the last of 
their race, they would not disgrace it. In the ver- 
nacular of the camp, they had agreed to " blow the 

whole thing into the air " rather than surrender. 

"I was quite determined," says Fayrer, "that they 
should not take me alive, and I would kill as many 
of them as I could before they took me. . . . Some 
men asked me to give them poison for their wives, if 
the enemy should get in. But this I absolutely re- 
fused to do." 

Courage, when high-strung, sometimes evolves an 
almost uncanny cheerfulness. The Sepoys brought 
a mortar into action that dropped shell after shell on 
one particular house. " We got the ladies up out of 
the Tyekhana," records Fayrer, and they amused 
themselves by trying to be cheerful and singing part- 
songs in the portico, to the rushing of shells and the 
whistlincr of musket-balls. When before were such 
songs attempted to such an accompaniment ? But 
the women of the Kesidency showed throughout a 
courage quite as high as that of the men. During 



LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAWRENCE 1/9 

the great assault on July 20, when, on the explosion 
of a mine, the Sepoys attempted to storm the Kesi- 
dency at half-a-dozen points, "every one," says 
Fayrer, "was at his post, and poured shot, shell, 
grape, and musketry into them as hard as possible. 
The noise was frightful, the enemy shouting and 
urging each other on. It certainly seemed to me as 
if our time had come. But all the poor ladies were 
patiently awaiting the result in the Tyekhana." 

" During the whole siege," says Gubbins, " I never 
heard of a man among the Europeans who played 
the coward. Some croaked, no doubt, many were 
despondent, yet others grew grimly desperate during 
those terrible days." Gubbins relates how he was 
one evening taken aside by an officer, who explained 
that he had arranged with his wife that, if the Sepoys 
forced their way in, he would shoot her. " She had 
declared herself content to die by a pistol-ball from 
his hand." He offered to do the same friendly ser- 
vice for Gubbins's wife, if necessary, and wanted Gub- 
bins to undertake a like desperate office for his wife, 
if required. To such desperate straits were civilised 
and Christian men driven ! 

The courage shown by the women was uniform 
and wonderful. Dr. Fayrer relates how a shell broke 
in the bedroom where his wife was lying. It shat- 
tered the room and set fire to the bedclothes with its 
explosion. Fayrer ran in ; and, he says, " My wife 
immediately spoke to me out of the smoke, and said 



l8o THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

she was not hurt. She was perfectly composed and 
tranquil, though a 9-pound bombshell had just burst 
by the side of her bed." 

There were three great all-round attacks, on July 
20, August 10, and September 5. The most des- 
perate, perhaps, was that on the Cawnpore battery, 
the most nearly successful that on the Sikh square. 
The attack on the Sikh square was preceded by the 
explosion of a mine which made a breach thirty feet 
wide in the British defences, and buried seven of its 
defenders under the ruins. There was good cover for 
the enemy close up to the breach, and no reason why 
they should not have swarmed in, except the argu- 
ment of the smoke-blackened, grim-looking sahibs 
who suddenly appeared, musket in hand, to guard 
the great gap. 

A rush was, indeed, made by the Sepoys, and a 
native officer of the Irregular Cavalry, who headed 
the rush gallantly enough, actually crossed the line 
of the entrenchments — the only mutineer who, 
during the long siege, succeeded in putting his foot 
on the soil held by the British. He was instantly 
shot, and so cruel and swift was the fire poured in 
upon the Sepoys that they fell back in confusion, 
and under Inglis's orders planks and doors were 
brought quickly up, and arranged, one overlapping 
the other, till the whole gap was covered, and a pile 
of sand-bags built behind it. 

Gubbins describes one critical moment in the 



LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAWRENCE l8l 

siege. On July 21st it was discovered the Sepoys 
had dug through an adjoining wall and found their 
way into a narrow lane which skirted the com- 
pound ; and, literally, only a canvas screen parted 
them from the British position ! Gubbins ran to the 
single loophole which commanded the lane, and, with 
his rifle, shot down every Sepoy who attempted to 
cross it while the gap in the British defences was 
being hurriedly built up. "At this moment," he 
says, " I heard the voice of a European behind me, 
and, without turning my head, begged that the wall 
in the rear of the mutineers might be loop-holed and 
musketry opened upon them. The person behind 
me, it seems, was Major Banks, He approached my 
post to get a sight of the enemy, and while looking 
out incautiously received a bullet through the 
temples. I heard the heavy fall, and turned for a 
second. He was dead. He never moved, and I re- 
sumed my guard over the enemy." For two stern 
hours Gubbins guarded the gap. Then assistance 
came, the Sepoys were driven from their point of 
vantage, and the gap in the defences built up. 

Later on in the siege the fighting was carried on 
beneath the surface of the earth. The Sepoys had 
amongst them many men belonging to a caste famous 
for skill with the spade, and from more than a score 
of separate points they drove mines towards the en- 
trenchments. Spade had to fight spade ; and, as 
in the 32nd were many Cornishmen familiar with 



1 82 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

mining work, these were employed, to countermine 
the enemy. The Sepoys undertook 37 separate 
mines, and. of these 36 were failures, only one — that 
directed against the Sikh square — proving successful. 

One of the most heroic figures in the immortal 
garrison was Captain Fulton, the garrison engineer, 
who, on the death of Major Anderson, took charge of 
all engineering operations. Fulton was a superb en- 
gineer, and all the stories of the siege do justice to 
the part he played in the defence. Gubbins says he 
was " the life and soul of everything that was perse- 
vering, chivalrous, and daring," and declares that he 
deserved to be called " the Defender of Lucknow." 
Mr. Fulton, of Melbourne, a relation of this brave 
man, still preserves the journal of the siege kept by 
his kinsman. It is a document of real historical 
value, and gives a graphic picture of the great 
struggle from day to day. He tells again and again 
how he met the enemy's mines by countermines, how 
he broke in upon them, swept them from their drive 
like flying rabbits, and blew the whole affair up, as 
he puts it, "with great enjoyment of the fun and 
excitement ! " 

Fulton once found that they had driven a mine 
close up to the wall of a house that formed part of 
the British defence, and he could hear the sound of 
pick and shovel distinctly. " I thought this very im- 
pudent," he writes ; " they could be so easily met ; 
but it seemed a bore to begin to counter. So I just 



LUCKNOW AND SIR HENRY LAWRENCE 1 83 

put my head over the wall and called out in Hindu- 
stanee a trifle of abuse and ' Bagho ! bagho ! ' — ' Fly ! 
fly ! ' — when such a scuffle and bolt took place I 
could not leave for half-an-hour for laughing. They 
dropped it for good — that was the best of the joke." 

Fulton took his full part in the general fighting. 
Thus, in the assault on the Cawnpore battery, he re- 
lates that he " found the enemy led by a man in pink, 
whom I had noticed several times directing them as 
they came up. I put a rifle-ball through him, and 
then sent TuUoch to order hand-grenades, the second 
of which, well thrown, cleared the ditch." Here is 
a picture, again, of one of Fulton's many sorties to 
destroy houses by which the British were annoyed : 

We sneaked out of our lines into a house. I had only 
a penknife, slow match, and port-fire in my hand, and was 
followed close by two Europeans, and siipported by a dozen 
more. We expected to find the house empty, but George 
Hutchinson, who was first, suddenly startled us by firing 
his revolver and calling out " Here are twenty of them ! " 
The two Europeans — indeed, all of them — fell back a pace 
or two ; but I seized a musket from one, and ran forward. 
They followed, and I put them in position to guard doors, 
while I twitted the enemy with not showing their faces, as 
I did, in front of the door, but standing with only their 
firelocks showing. The chaff had the effect, for one dashed 
out and fired at me, but I shot him instanter. They then 
bolted as I gave the word " Charge ! " and we blew up the 
house. Great fun and excitement in a small way ! 

Fulton detected a mine the enemy had driven a 



1 84 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

certain distance ; he ran a short countermine to meet 
it, and then sat patiently, revolver in hand, waiting 
for the unconscious, enemy to break through, " Some 
one," he relates, "looking for me, asked one of the 
Europeans if I was in the mine. ' Yes, sir ! ' said 
the sergeant, ' there he has been for the last two 
hours, like a terrier at a rat-hole, and not likely 
to leave it either all day ! '" It was to the energy, 
skill, and daring of this gallant officer that the com- 
plete defeat of the enemy's mines was due. 

The last entry in his journal is dated September 1 1 ; 
on September 1 3 he was killed. Says Captain Birch, 
" The death of this brilliant officer was occasioned by 
one of the most curious of wounds. He had been 
inspecting a new battery in an earthwork opposite 
Mr, Gubbins's house. He was lying at full length in 
one of the embrasures, with a telescope in his hand. 
He turned his face, with a smile on it, and said : 
' They are just going to fire,' and sure enough they 
did ! The shot took away the whole of the back of 
Captain Fulton's head, leaving his face like a mask 
still on his neck. When he was laid out on his back 
on a bed, we could not see how he had been killed. 
His was the most important loss we had sustained 
after that of Sir Henry Lawrence." 




MAJOR-GENERAL SIR HENRY HAVELOCK, K.C.B. 



From an eiigraviiig 



CHAPTER VII 

LUCKNOW AND HAVELOCK 

LUCKNOW is only forty-five miles from Cawn- 
pore. On July 25, Havelock, at the head of his 
tiny but gallant force, by this time tempered in the 
flame of battle to the quality of mere steel, crossed 
the Ganges in a tempest of rain, and started to 
rescue the beleaguered garrison of Lucknow from 
the fate of Cawnpore. But it was not until Septem- 
ber 25 that Outram and Havelock clambered through 
the shot-battered gun embrasure in the low wall 
beside the Bailey Guard at Lucknow, and brought 
relief to the hard-pressed garrison. And the story 
of those nine weeks is scribbled over with records of 
daring and of achievement unsurpassed in the his- 
tory of war. 

Havelock left 300 men under Neill to hold Cawn- 
pore, where rough but adequate entrenchments had 
been thrown up. Furious rains had swollen the 
Ganges, and it took him four days to transport his 
little force across its turbid and far-extended waters. 
He had under his command Neill's " blue-caps," the 
64th, the 84th, the 78th, and Brasyer's Sikhs, a force 
not quite 1500 strong — of which only I300 were 

i8s 



LUCKNOW AND HAVELOCK I 8/ 

British — with ten small field-pieces and a troop of 
sixty horsemen. And with this mere handful of 
men a dozen strong positions had to be carried, a 
great river crossed, and a huge city, swarming with 
enemies, pierced ! 

The village of Onao barred the road, some nine 
miles from the banks of the Ganges. Every house 
was held by Oude irregulars, a stubborn and hard- 
fighting race ; the rain-water, lying deep on both 
flanks of the village, made a turning movement im- 
possible. The infantry had outmarched the guns, 
and Havelock wished to keep them back till his artil- 
lery came up. 

But the men were fiercely impatient, and could 
hardly be restrained. " Pray, sir," urged Colonel 
Hamilton, of the 78th, " let them go at the place and 
have done with it." Havelock nodded, and in an 
instant Highlanders and Fusileers, vehemently racing 
against each other, went at a run into the village. 
Every house was a loopholed fortress, and the fight- 
ing was stubborn and deadly. House after house 
broke into flames, while clusters of Highlanders and 
Fusileers broke through doors and windows. The 
Oude men, to quote Forbes's phrase, "fought like 
wild cats while they roasted." The 64th next came 
up at the double, and the village was carried. 

Beyond the village the flying guns of the enemy 
halted, and drew up across the narrow causeway, 
barring it with a fiery hedge of shot and flame ; but 



1 88 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

the " blue-caps," their officers leading, SAvept like a 
human whirlwind down on the guns, and the stub- 
born Oude gunners, to a man, were bayoneted at 
their pieces. 

Six miles further the walled town of Bussarat 
Gunj crossed the road, its gateway spanning the 
whole width of the causeway. Havelock took his 
guns within short range of the gateway, and com- 
menced to batter it, whilst he despatched the 64th 
to turn the town and cut off the retreat of the enemy. 
It was clever strategy, but the 78th and the Fusileers 
were too quick, the 64th too slow. Highlanders and 
"blue-caps" carried trench, gateway, and battery 
with one sustained and angry rush, and as they 
came storming through the gateway with bent heads 
and bayonets at the charge, the enemy were driven, 
a jumble of flying horsemen, galloping artillery, and 
wrecked infantry, through the town beyond it. The 
64th, it is said, marched reluctantly on their turning 
movement. The men were eager to share the straight 
rush at the gate. 

Young Havelock, mistaking the men's temper, 
galloped up to the regiment with a message from 
his impatient father that lost nothing in carrying — 
"If you don't go at the village I'll send men that 
will go, and put an everlasting disgrace on you!" 
Brave men do not lightly endure the whip of a mes- 
sage like that, and Forbes relates how a private 
named Paddy Cavanagh leaped from the ranks, ran 



LUCKNOW AND HAVELOCK 1 89 

single-liaiided. in on the enemy, " cursing his comrades 
with bitter Irish malisons as he sped, and wa,s hter- 
ally hacked to pieces, fighting Hke a wild cat in the 
ranks of his enemies " ! How the 64th followed 
where valiant Paddy Cavanagh had led may be 
imagined ; but the late arrival of the 64th had spoiled 
Havelock's combination, and he was too much given 
to vehement rhetoric to spare the heavy-footed 64th 
a lash of the whip. " Some of you," he said in his 
order of the day next morning, " fought yesterday as 
if the cholera had seized your mind as well as your 
bodies!" 

Havelock had by this time marched fifteen miles, 
fought two battles, used up one-third of his ammuni- 
tion, and lost by bullet or cholera about one-sixth of 
his force. At this rate of progress he would reach 
Lucknow with powderless guns and 600 bayonets ! 
Cawnpore itself, too, was threatened, and at Dinapore, 
a vital point in the long water-line between Calcutta 
and Allahabad, three regiments of Sepoys had broken 
into mutiny, and threatened Havelock's communica- 
tions with the capital. 

Havelock consulted with Tytler, his quartermaster- 
general, his chief engineer, and his son. Young 
Havelock, with the effervescing and heady valour 
of youth, was for " pushing on at all hazards " ; the 
older men declared this meant the entire destruction 
of the force, and perhaps the loss of Lucknow, and 
Havelock was too good a soldier not to agree with 



190 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

this view. It was an act of nobler courage to fall 
back than to advance, but Havelock's fine-tempered 
valour was equal to the feat, and he turned the faces 
of his reluctant soldiers back to Cawnpore. 

Neill, fierce and vehement by nature, when he 
heard the news, despatched an amazing letter to 
his chief. 

" You ought not to remain a day where you are," 
he wrote. " You talk of advancing as soon as rein- 
forcements reach you. You ought to advance again, 
and not halt until you have rescued, if possible, the 
garrison of Lucknow." Havelock, with -that note of 
shrill temper which ran through his character, was 
the last man to endure exhortations of this peremp- 
tory quality from a subordinate. " There must be 
an end," he wrote back, " to these proceedings at 
once." Nothing, he said, but the possible injury to 
the public service prevented him from putting Neill 
under immediate arrest ! " But," he added, " you 
now stand warned. Attempt no further dictation ! " 

The truth is, both men were splendid soldiers, but 
of a type so different that neither could understand 
the other. Neill was of the silent, dour type ; Have- 
lock was too shrill and vocal for him. Havelock, on 
the other hand, often felt Neill's stern silence to be 
an unsyllabled reproof, and he more than suspected 
Neill of the desire to overbear him. When Neill 
joined him at Cawnpore, Havelock's first words to 
him were, "Now, General Neill, let us understand 



LUCKNOW AND HAVELOCK IQI 

each other. You have no power or authority here 
whilst I am here, and you are not to issue a single 
order here." There were the elements of a very 
pretty quarrel betwixt the two soldiers who were 
upholding the flag of England at the heart of the 
Mutiny ; and yet, so essentially noble Avere both men, 
and so fine was their common standard of soldierly 
duty, that they laid aside their personal quarrel 
absolutely, and stood by each other with flawless 
loyalty till, under the fatal archway at the Kaisar- 
bagh, Neill fell, shot through the head. 

Havelock telegraphed to Calcutta that he could 
not resume his march to Lucknow till he had been 
reinforced by looo infantry and Olpherts' battery 
complete. Yet on August 4, when he had been 
reinforced by merely a single company and two guns, 
he started afresh for Lucknow, won another costly 
victory at Bussarat Gunj, and then fell back once 
more on Cawnpore, with cholera raging amongst his 
men. Almost every fourth British soldier under 
his command was disabled either by sickness or 
wounds. Havelock had simply to wait till reinforce- 
ments came up ; but he relieved his feelings while he 
waited by marching out and destroying Bithoor, Nana 
Sahib's palace. 

The days crept past leaden-footed ; reinforcements 
trickled in, so to speak, drop by drop. Not till 
September 16 was Havelock ready for the final 
march to Lucknow. And then Outram arrived to 



192 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

supersede him ! It was, in a sense, a cruel stroke to 
Havelock. But lie and Outram were tried comrades, 
knitted to each other by a friendship woven of the 
memories and companionship of many years, and 
Outram was himself one of the most chivalrous and 
self-effacing men that ever lived. The story of how 
he refused to take the command out of Havelock's 
hands, confined himself to his civil office as commis- 
sioner, and put himself, as a mere volunteer, under 
Havelock's orders, is an oft-told and most noble tale. 

On September 19 Havelock crossed the Ganges, by 
this time bridged, with a force numbering 3000 men 
of all arms. The Madras Fusileers, the 5 th Fusileers, 
the 84th, and two companies of the 64th, under Neill, 
formed the first brigade. The second brigade, under 
Colonel Hamilton, consisted of the 78th Highlanders, 
the 90th, and Brasyer's Sikhs. The artillery consisted 
of three batteries, under Maude, Olpherts, and Eyre 
respectively; and no guns that ever burned powder 
did more gallant and desperate service than these. 
The pieces, indeed, might well have been stored, as 
heroic relics, in some great museum. The cavalry 
was made up of 109 volunteers and 59 native horse- 
men, under Barrow. 

The rain fell as though another Noachian deluge 
was imminent. The rice-fields on either side of the 
road were either lakes or quagmires. The column, 
however, pushed on with eager and cheerful, if wet- 
footed, courage. The Sepoys held the village of 



LUCKNOW AND HAVELOCK 1 93 

Mungulwagh strongly. Havelock smote them in 
front with his artillery, turned their flank with his 
infantry, marching — or rather splashing — through 
the swamps, and when the Sepoys had been, in this 
manner, hustled out of the town, he launched his 
little squadron of cavalry upon them. Outram rode 
among the troopers armed with nothing but a gold- 
mounted cane, with which he thumped the heads 
and shoulders of the flying enemy. 

Here some mutineers, stained with special crimes, 
fell into Havelock's hands, and Maude, in his " Memo- 
ries of the Mutiny," tells how Havelock asked him 
" if he knew how to blow a man from a gun." This 
art does not form part of the curriculum at Wool- 
wich, but Maude could only touch his cap and 
say he " would try." Here is a grim picture of the 
doings of that stern time : — 

When we halted for the night, I moved one of my guns 
on to the causeway, unlimbered it, and brought it into 
'' action front." The evening was just beginning to grow 
dusk, and the enemy were still in sight, on the crest of 
some rising ground a few hundred yards distant. The 
remainder of my guns were " parked " in a nice mango- 
tope to the right of the road. . . . The first man led out 
was a fine-looking young Sepoy, with good features, and a 
bold, resolute expression. He begged that he might not 
be bound, but this could not be allowed, and I had his 
wrists tied tightly each to the upper part of a wheel of the 
gun. Then I depressed the muzzle, until it pointed to the 
pit of his stomach, just below the sternum. We put no 

N 



194 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

shot in, and I only kept one gunner (besides the " firing " 
number) near the gun, standing myself about lo ft. to the 
left rear. The young Sepoy looked undauntedly at us 
during the whole process of pinioning ; indeed, he never 
flinched for a moment. Then I ordered the port-fire to be 
lighted, and gave the word " Fire ! " There was a con- 
siderable recoil from the gun, and a thick cloud of smoke 
hung over us. As this cleared away, we saw two legs 
lying in front of the gun, but no other sign of what had, 
just before, been a human being and a brave man. At 
this moment, perhaps from six to eight seconds after the 
explosion, down fell the man's head among us, slightly 
blackened, but otherwise scarcely changed. It must 
have gone straight vip into the air, probably about 200 
feet. 

This was stern, uncanny occupation for a liumane- 
minded British officer ! But the times were stern, 
the crisis supreme. 

On the evening of the second day's march the air 
was full of a faint, far-off, vibrating sound. It was 
the distant roar of the enemy's cannon breaking like 
some angry and dreadful sea on the besieged Kesi- 
dency ! When the camp was pitched Havelock fired 
a royal salute, hoping the sound would reach the ears 
of the beleaguered garrison, and tell them rescue was 
coming; but the faint wind failed to carry the sound 
to the Kesidency. When the soldiers began their 
march on September 23, Lucknow was only sixteen 
miles distant, and by noon the Alumbagh was in 
sight, held by a force of some 12,000 men. 



LUCKNOW AND HAVELOCK 1 95 

' Havelock turned tlie enemy's right with his second 
brigade, while he engaged the enemy's guns with 
Eyre's battery in front. Olpherts, with his guns, was 
sent to assist the turning movement. Here is a 
stirring battle picture drawn by Forbes: — 

At a stretching gallop, with some volunteer cavalry in 
front of it, the horse battery dashed up the road past the 
halted first brigade, which cheered loudly as the cannon 
swept by, Neill waving his cap and leading the cheering. 
On the left of the road there was a great deep trench full 
of water, which had somehow to be crossed. Led by 
Barrow, the cavalry escort plunged in, and scrambled 
through, and then halted to watch how Olpherts would 
conquer the obstacle. " Hell-fire Jack " was quite equal 
to the occasion, and his men were as reckless as himself. 
With no abatement of speed the guns were galloped into 
the great trough. For a moment there was chaos — a wild 
medley of detachments, drivers, guns, struggling horses, 
and splashing water ; and then the guns were out on the 
further side, nobody and nothing the worse for the 
scramble, all hands on the alert to obey Olpherts' sten- 
torian shout, " Forward at a gallop ! " 

Hamilton's men marched and fought knee-deep in 
water ; but the enemy's right was smashed, his centre 
tumbled into ruin, and the men of the 78th and 
the Fusileers actually carried the Alumbagh in ten 
minutes ! To tumble 1 2,000 men into flight, and carry 
the Alumbagh in this fashion, and in a space so 
brief, was a great feat; and while the men were in 
the exultation of victory, a messenger came riding in 



196 THE TALE OF THE GEE AT MUTINY 

with the news — unhappily not true — that Delhi had 
fallen ! 

On the 24th the little force rested, while its leaders 
matured their plans for the advance to the Residency. 
Before them ran the great canal, the road crossing it 
by what was called the Charbagh bridge. Havelock's 
plan was to bridge the Goomtee, the river into which 
the canal ran, march along its further bank, round 
the city to its north-west angle, and re-cross by the 
iron bridge immediately in front of the Residency, 
and in this way avoid the necessity of forcing his Avay, 
with desperate and bloody street-fighting, through 
the interlaced and tangled lanes of the city. 

But the soil between the canal and the river was 
little better than a marsh, and it was determined to 
force the Charbagh bridge, advance on a lane which 
skirted the left bank of the canal, then turn sharply 
to the left, and fight a way across the city to the 
Residency. 

Three hundred footsore and sick men were left to 
hold the Alumbagh. In the grey dawn of September 
25, Havelock's men, scanty in number, worn with 
marching, and hardened with a score of fights, were 
falling into line for the final march, which was to 
relieve Lucknow. " The sergeants of companies," 
says an eye-witness, "acting on their orders, were 
shouting ' Fall out, all you men that are footsore or 
sick ; ' but many added the taunt, ' and all you fellows 
whose heart isn't good as well ! ' " But no man fell 



LUCKNOW AND HAVELOCK 1 97 

out of the ranks that grey September morning on that 
coward's plea! At half-past eight the bugles sang 
out the advance, and with a cheer, and a quick step 
which the officers could scarcely restrain from break- 
ing into the double, the men moved off for the last 
act in this great adventure. 

Maude's guns moved first, covered by two 
companies of the 5th (Northumberland) Fusileers. 
Outram rode by Maude's side with the leading gun. 
Instantly, from a wide front, a cruel and deadly fire 
smote the head of the little column. From the 
enemy's batteries on either flank, carefully laid and 
admirably served, from the cornfields, from the 
garden walls, from the house-roofs, a terrific fire of 
musketry and cannon-shot lashed, as with a scourge 
of flame, the causeway on which the English guns 
were moving. Maude's guns were halted, and opened 
fiercely in answer to this fire. The men fell fast. A 
musket-ball passed through Outram's arm, but, says 
Maude, " he only smiled, and asked one of us to tie his 
handkerchief tightly above the wound." The cluster 
of British guns, with their gallant gunners, stood in 
the very centre of a tempest of shot. Here is a pic- 
ture, drawn by Maude, of the carnage in his battery : — 

Almost at the same moment the finest soldier in our 
battery, and the best artilleryman I have ever known, 
Sergeant-Major Alexander Lamont, bad the whole of bis 
stomach carried away by a round shot. He looked up 
to me for a moment with a piteous expression, but had 



198 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

only strength to utter two words, " Oh ! God ! " when he I 
sank dead on the road. Just then another round shot { 
took off the leg, high up the thigh, of the next senior j 
sergeant, John Kiernan. He was afterwards carried 
back to the Alumbagh, but soon died from the shock. 
Kiernan was an excellent specimen of a Roman Catholic 
North of Ireland soldier. He was as trvie as steel, i 
Another tragic sight on that road was the death of a 
fine young gunner, the only one, I believe, who wore - 
an artillery jacket that day. A round shot took his j 
head clean off, and for about a second the body stood 
straight up, surmounted by the red collar, and then fell j 
flat on the road. But as fast as the men of the leading i 
gun detachments were swept away by the enemy's fire ' 
I replaced them by volunteers from other guns. Several 
times I turned to the calm, cool, grim general standing 
near, and asked him to allow us to advance, as we could 
not possibly do any good by halting there. He agreed j 
with me, but did not like to take the responsibility of j 
ordering us to go on. j 

At last tlie order to move on came, and Charbagli 
bridge was reached. It was defended on tlie further 
side by a solid earthen rampart 7 ft. high, but with a i 
narrow slit in the middle through which one man \ 
at a time could pass. It was armed with six guns, 
two of them 24-pounders. Tall houses, crowded with 
musketrymen, covered the bridge with their fire, and ! 
solid battalions were drawn up in its rear. Maude 
was planted with two of his guns in the open, and ' 
within short range of the enemy's battery, and com- ' 
menced a valiant duel with it. Outram led the 5 th 



LUCKNOW AND HAVELOCK 1 99 

Fusileers by a detour for the purpose of smiting 
the battery at the bridge-head with a fianlt-fire. 
Maude's two guns were fighting six, at a distance 
of 150 yards, and his gunners fell fast. 

Again and again he had to call for volunteers to 
work his guns from the Madras Fusileers lying down 
under cover near him. The guns were of an ancient 
pattern, and carried a large leathern pouch full of 
loose powder for priming uses. " As the lane was 
very narrow," says Maude, "the two guns were ex- 
ceedingly close to one another, and when in their 
recoil they passed each other, amid a shower of 
sparks and smoke, they frequently set fire to the 
loose powder in the priming pouches, and blew the 
poor gunners up!" Yet Maude's gallant lads worked 
their guns unflinchingly. 

Neill stood in a bay of a garden wall close by, with 
his " blue-caps " lying down under cover, waiting till 
Outram's flanking movement should tell on the 
enemy's battery ; and Maude, with his artillerymen 
almost all shot down, said to young Havelock, "Do 
something, in the name of Heaven ! " Havelock 
rode through the tempest of shot to Neill, and urged 
an immediate rush on the bridge ; but Neill, with 
soldierly coolness, declared he would not move with- 
out orders. Then young Havelock played a boyish 
and gallant trick. He rode quietly off, turned round 
a bend in the road, and a moment after came back 
at a gallop, gave a smart salute to Neill as he pulled 



200 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

up his horse on its haunches, and said, as though 
bringing an order from his father, " You are to 
carry the bridge at once, sir ! " 

At the word, Arnold, who commanded the " blue- 
caps," leaped to his feet and raced on to the bridge, 
his men rising with a shout and following him. 
Havelock and Tytler overtook him at a gallop, and 
the bridge in a moment was covered with a mass of 
charging soldiers. 

But a blast of shots from the guns at its head — 
the deep bellow of the 24-pounders sounding high 
above the tumult — swept the bridge for a moment 
clear. Arnold had fallen with both legs smashed, 
Tytler's horse had gone down with its brave rider ; 
only young Havelock and a corporal of the Fusileers, 
named Jakes, stood unhurt. Havelock rode coolly 
up to the rampart of earth, and, waving his sword, 
called to the Fusileers to " come on " ; and Corporal 
Jakes, as he busily plied his musket, shouted to 
Havelock, soothingly, " Never fear, sir ! We'll soon 
have the beggars out of that ! " All this took but a 
few seconds of time ; the Sepoys were toiling with 
frantic energy to reload their guns. Then through 
the white smoke came the rush of the Madras Fusi- 
leers — an officer leading. Over the bridge, up the 
seven-foot rampart, through the intervals betwixt 
the guns as with a single impulse, came the levelled 
bayonets and fierce faces of the charging British, and 
the bridore was won ! 



LUCKNOW AND HAYELOCK 201 

The entire British force came swiftly over, the 
78th was left to hold the bridge and form the rear- 
guard, while the British column swung round to the 
right and pushed on through the narrow lane that 
bordered the canal. 

The 78th, while guarding the bridge, had a very 
trying experience. A great force of the enemy came 
down the Cawnpore road with banners flying and 
loud beating of drums, and flung itself with wild 
courage on the Highlanders. A little stone temple 
stood a hundred yards up the road, commanding the 
bridge ; the Sepoys took possession of this, and from 
it galled the Highlanders cruelly with their fire. 
Hastings, of the 78th, stepped out to the front, and 
called for volunteers to storm the temple. There 
was an angry rush of Highlanders up the road ; the 
temple was carried at the point of the bayonet, and 
then held as a sort of outwork to the bridge. 

The Sepoys next brought up three brass guns, 
and lashed temple and road alike with their fire. 
Webster, an ofiicer of the 78th, famous for his 
swordsmanship and strength, called out, "Who's for 
these infernal guns ? " and ran out, sword in hand. 
His Highlanders followed him, but could not over- 
take Webster, who sprang upon the guns, and slew a 
gunner, just in the act of putting his linstock to the 
touch-hole, with a stroke so mighty that it clove the 
Sepoy through skull and jaws almost to the collar- 
bone ! The guns were captured, dragged with a 



202 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

triumjDliant skirl of the pipes to the canal, and flung 
in, and the Highlanders set off to follow the column. 

They did not follow in its immediate track, but 
made a wide sweep to the right, and both sections of 
the column, with much stern fighting, reached what 
was called the Chutter Munzil Palace. " Here," says 
Forbes, " were the chiefs of the little army. On his 
big ' waler ' sat Outram, a splash of blood across his 
face, and one arm in a sling, the Malacca cane, which 
formed his sole weapon in battle, still grasped in the 
hand of the sound limb. Havelock, on foot, was 
walking up and down on Outram's near side, with 
short steps. All around them, at a little distance, 
were officers, and outside of the circle so formed 
were soldiers, guns, wounded men, bullocks, camels " 
— all the tumult, in a word, of the battle. 

Outram and Havelock disagreed as to the next 
step to be taken. Outram — the cooler brain of the 
two — wished to halt for the night, and then to push 
their way in the morning through the successive 
courts of the palaces right up to the Kesidenc}'. 
Havelock was eager to complete the day's work, 
and reach the Residency with a final and desperate 
rush. 

A long, winding, and narrow street stretched before 
them up to the Bailey Guard Gate, the entrance to 
the Residency. It was true that every cross street 
that broke its length was swept by the fire of the 
enemy's guns, that the houses were loop-holed and 



LUCKNOW AND HAVELOCK 203 

crowded with Sepoys, and from the flat roofs of the 
houses above a tempest of fire would be poured upon 
the British. But Havelock was full of warlike impa- 
tience. " There is the street," said he ; " we see the 
worst. We shall be slated, but we can push through, 
and get it over." Outram acknowledged afterwards 
that he ought to have said, " Havelock, we have vir- 
tually reached the Residency. I now take the com- 
mand ; " but he added to the confession, " My temper 
got a little the better of me, and I said, ' In God's 
name, then, let us go on.' " 

The Highlanders led, Havelock and Outram riding 
with their leading files. Brasyer's Sikhs followed. 
It was, as Forbes says, " a true via dolorosa." From 
house-roof, from door, from window, from every cross 
lane poured a tempest of shot, and through it the 
British could only push with dogged, all-enduring 
courage, seldom halting to fire back. And this 
experience stretched over more than three-quarters 
of a mile ! Here is a little battle vignette taken 
from Forbes : — 

In the foremost company of the Highland regiment 
were two staunch comrades, named Glandell and 
M'Donough, Irishmen and Catholics am.ong the Scots 
and Presbyterians. In this street of death M'Donough's 
leg was shattered by a bullet. He fell, but was not left 
to die. His stalwart chum raised the wounded man, took 
him on his back, and trudged on with his heavy burden. 
Nor did the hale man, thus encumbered, permit himself to 
be a non-combatant. When a chance oflfered him to fire 



204 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

a shot, Glandell propped his wounded comrade up against 
some wall, and would betake himself to his rifle, while 
it could be of service. Then he would pick M'Donough up 
again, and stagger cheerily onward, till the well-deserved 
goal of safety was reached. 

The road at one point ran under an archway, and 
here Neill met with his death-shot. He drew up his 
horse by the arch quite coolly, and was steadying the 
soldiers as they swept through it. A Sepoy leaned 
forward from a window above the arch, with his 
musket almost touching Neill's head. Neill sat with 
his face turned to his shoulder, watching a gun going 
through the archway, when the Sepoy fired. His 
bullet struck the side of Neill's head above the ear, 
and killed him instantly. Out of the tumult and 
passion of the fight thus dropped, in a moment, this 
most gallant of soldiers. 

Still the fierce fight raged. Still, beaten with a 
tempest of shot, the tormented column pushed on 
its dogged way. Suddenly from the head of the 
column rose a mighty shout. It was not the cry of 
soldiers at the charge, full of the wrath of battle. 
It was a great cry of exultation and triumph. 
Through the grey twilight, dark with eddying 
smoke, the leading files of the British had seen 
the battered archway of the Bailey Guard. The 
goal was reached. 

The beleaguered garrison had listened, with what 
eagerness may be imagined, to the tumult of the 



LUCKNOW AND HAVELOCK 20 5 

fight as it crept nearer them. Its smoke was blowing 
over their defences. Those who watched the advance 
from the Residency could measure the approach of 
the relieving force by the attitudes and gestures of 
the Sepoys on the house-tops, as they fired furiously 
down on the gallant column forcing its way along the 
streets beneath them. The storm of sound grew 
louder, clearer, deeper. Suddenly, through the 
smoke and twilight, they caught a glimpse of 
figures on horseback, the gleam of bayonets, the 
white faces and red uniforms of British soldiers. 
An earthwork blocked the Bailey Gate itself, but 
the handful of men acting as the garrison of the 
gate, pulled hurriedly back from its ragged embra- 
sure in the wall, to the left of the entrance, one of 
the guns, and through that embrasure — Outram, on 
his big Australian horse, leading — came the High- 
landers, with Havelock and his staff; then the 
Sikhs; then the Fusileers. The Residency was 
reached ! 

How the shout of exultation ran round the 
seventeen shot-battered posts of the long-besieged 
entrenchments can be imagined. The women, the 
children, the very sick in the hospital, lent their 
voices to that shout. The Highlanders, who came 
first, poured their Celtic exclamations and blessings 
on the men and women they had rescued. " We 
expected to have found only your bones," said one. 
That the children were still alive filled the gallant 



206 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

but soft-hearted Higlilanders with amazed joy. " The 
big, rough-bearded soldiers," wrote one of the rescued 
ladies, "were seizing the little children out of our 
arms, kissing them with tears running down their 
cheeks, and thanking God that they had come in 
time to save them from the fate of those at 
Cawnpore." 

Let it be remembered that for more than eighty 
days the garrison had lived under the shadow of 
death. No message, no whisper of news, from the 
outside world had reached them. Their rescuers 
were men of the same name and blood, who had 
fought their way as if through the flames of the Pit 
to reach and save them ! And into what a mood of 
passionate joy amongst the delivered, and of pas- 
sionate exultation and triumph amongst the deli- 
verers, the crowd which thronged the Residency that 
night was lifted may be more easily imagined than 
described. It was a night worth living for; almost 
worth dying for. 

Lady Inglis has told how she listened to the 
tremendous cheering that welcomed the British 
across the Residency lines, and how her husband 
brought up "a short, quiet-looking, grey-haired 
man," who she guessed at once was Havelock. It 
was a great triumph, but a great price was paid for it. 
The relieving column, out of its 3000 men, lost in 
killed or wounded more than 700, nearly one in every 
four of its whole number ! 



LUCKNOW AND HAVELOCK 207 

One unfortunate incident marked tlie relief. As 
the Highlanders approached the Bailey Guard Gate 
they took Aitken's men of the 13 th for the enemy, 
and leaped upon them with gleaming and angry 
bayonets, and slew some before their blunder was 
discovered. It was never imagined that the very 
outpost of the heroic garrison would be found to 
consist of Sepoys, fighting with such long-enduring 
loyalty against their own countrymen. It was a very 
cruel fate for these faithful Sepoys to perish under 
the bayonets of the relieving force. 

Still another remarkable incident maybe described. 
A cluster of doolies, with wounded officers and men, 
lost its way in the tangled streets and was cut off. 
Nine men of the escort, with five wounded, took 
refuge in a small building which formed one side of 
the gateway where Neill had been shot; and for a 
whole day and night they defended themselves 
against overwhelming numbers. Dr. Home, of the 
90th, was one of the party, and has left a graphic 
account of what is perhaps the most brilliant little 
incident in the whole history of the siege. 

The Sepoys kept up a bitter and tireless fire on the 
single doorway of the room held by the nine. One of 
the British, a Fusileer named M'Manus, stood outside 
the doorway, sheltering himself behind a pillar, and 
shot down man after man of the enemy. So cool and 
quick and deadly was his fire that the Sepoys feared 
to make a rush. At last their leader, to encourage 



208 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

tliem, shouted there were but three sahibs in the 
house, whereupon the whole fourteen, wounded in- 
cluded, joined in a loud cheer to undeceive them. 
Captain Arnold, of the Fusileers, lay wounded in one 
of the abandoned doolies visible through the door- 
way. Two gallant privates, Ryan and M'Manus, 
charged out through the fire and carried their 
officer into the house. They ran out a second time 
and brought in a wounded private ; but in each case 
the comrade they carried was mortally wounded while 
in their arms. 

Again and again some leader of the Sepoys ran out, 
heading a charge on the doorway ; but each time the 
leader was shot, and the Sepoys fell back. The sorely 
beleaguered party was rescued the next morning. Just 
when hope seemed to have abandoned them, a new 
blast of musketry volleys was heard at a little dis- 
tance, and one of the Fusileers recognised the regular 
sound. He jumped up, shouting, " Oh, boys, them's 
our own chaps ! " 



CHAPTER VIII 

LUCKNOW AND SIR COLIN CAMPBELL 

HAVELOCK fought his way through blood and 
fire into the Residency, but he shrank from 
leading a great procession of women and children 
and wounded men along that via dolorosa — that 
pathway of blood — by which, at so grim a cost, he 
had himself reached the beleaguered garrison. The 
Residency, it was clear, must be held, since the great 
company of helpless women and children it sheltered 
could not be carried off. So what Havelock and 
Outram really accomplished was not so much a Relief 
as a Reinforcement. 

Outram assumed the command, and for six weeks 
the greatly-strengthened garrison held its own with 
comparative ease against the revolted swarms, reck- 
oned — uncertainly — at no less than 60,000 strong, 
who still maintained a sullen blockade of the 
Residency. 

Early in November reinforcements were pouring 

in from England, and a new actor appeared on the 

scene. The crisis of the Mutiny called to the post 

of commander-in-chief in India the best soldier Great 

Britain possessed. Colin Campbell was not, perhaps, 

209 o 



2IO THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

a great general, in the sense in which Sir Jolin 
Moore, or Wellington, or Sir Charles Napier were 
generals. But he was a tough, hard-fighting, much- 
experienced soldier, with that combination of wari- 
ness and fire which marks the Scotch genius for 
battle. What he did not know of the details of a 
soldier's business might almost be described as not 
worth knowing. He had served his apprenticeship 
to war in the perils and hardships of Moore's retreat 
to Corunna. A list of the battles and sieges in which 
he took part would cover almost the entire military- 
history of Great Britain between Corunna and the 
Crimea. His cool skill and daring as a soldier are 
picturesquely illustrated by the famous " thin red 
line " incident at Balaclava ; where, disdaining to 
throw his troops into square, he received a charge 
of Russian cavalry on a thin extended front, and 
smote the assailing squadron into fragments with a 
single blast of musketry. 

Colin Campbell was sixty-five years of age, and 
regarded his military career as over; but on July ii, 
when the news of General Anson's death reached 
England, Lord Panmure offered Campbell the chief 
command in India, and with characteristic prompti- 
tude the Scottish veteran offered to start for India 
the same afternoon! Campbell landed at Calcutta 
on August 1 3, spent some weeks there in " organising 
victory " — or, rather, in reorganising the whole shat- 
tered military system of the Presidency — and on 






LUCKNOW AND SIR COLIN CAMPBELL 211 

October 27 hurried to the seat of war. He reached 
Cawnpore on November 3, and on the 9th set out to 
reheve Lucknow. " Our friends in Lucknow," he 
wrote to his sister, " have food only for five or six 
days." This was a mistake that cost the lives of 
many brave men. Lawrence had provisioned the 
Residency better than was imagined. But the delu- 
sion of imminent starvation, which made Havelock 
fight his way at such desperate speed and cost 
into Lucknow, still prevailed, and governed British 
strategy. Delhi had fallen by September 20 — a 
story yet to be told — and part of its besieging force 
was thus available for a new march on Lucknow. 

On the afternoon of November 11 Campbell re- 
viewed the relieving force at Buntera. It was modest 
in numbers — counting only about 4700 men. But 
war-hardened, and full of fiery yet disciplined daring, 
it was as efficient for all the purposes of battle as 
Napoleon's Old Guard or Wellington's famous Light 
Division. The cavalry brigade included two squad- 
rons of the 9th Lancers, Hodson's Horse, and three 
squadrons of native cavalry. The Naval Brigade 
was under Peel, the third son of the great Prime 
Minister of England, one of the most daring yet 
gentle spirits that ever fought and died for Eng- 
land. Evelyn Wood, who served under him as middy 
in the Crimea, describes him as " the bravest of the 
brave," and yet " an ideal English gentleman." " His 
dark brown wavy hair was carefully brushed back, 



212 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

disclosing a perfectly oval face, a high square fore- 
head, and deep blue-grey eyes, which flashed when 
he was talking eagerly, as he often did." The Artil- 
lery Brigade consisted of five batteries. The infantry 
was made up of detachments from the 4th, the 5th, 
the 23rd Fusileers, a wing of the 53rd, part of the 
82nd, and the full strength of the 93rd Highlanders, 
with some Sikh regiments. 

The 93rd was 1000 strong, and 700 men in the 
ranks carried the Crimean medal on their breasts. 
It has been described as "the most Scotch of all 
the Highland regiments," and a strong religious — as 
well as a rich Celtic — strain ran through its ranks. 
Forbes-Mitchell, indeed, who marched in its ranks, 
says the regiment constituted a sort of military 
Highland parish, ministers and elders complete. 
The elders were selected from among the men of all 
ranks, two sergeants, two corporals, and two privates. 
It had a regular service of communion plate, and the 
communion was administered to the whole regiment 
by its chaplain twice a year. 

The 93rd was drawn up in quarter-distance column 
on the extreme left of the line as Colin Campbell rode 
down to review his forces that November afternoon. 
It was in full Highland costume, with kilts and 
bonnets and wind-blown plumes. Campbell's Celtic 
blood kindled when he reached the Highlanders. 
" Ninety-third ! " he said, " you are my own lads ; I 
rely on you to do the work." And a voice from the 



LUCKNOW AND SIR COLIN CAMPBELL 213 

ranks in broadest Doric answered, " Ay, ay, Sir Colin, 
ye ken us and we ken you ; we'll bring the women 
and children out of Lucknow or die wi' you in the 
attempt." And then from the steady ranks of the 
Highlanders there broke a shout, sudden and deep 
and stern, the shout of valiant men — the men of the 
hardy North — pledging themselves to valiant deeds. 

Here is the description given by an eye-witness 
of the little army, less than 5000 strong, but of 
such magnificent fighting quality, down whose ranks 
Colin Campbell rode as the November sun was going 
down : — 

The field-guns from Delhi looked blackened and ser- 
vice-worn ; but the horses were in good condition, and the 
harness in perfect repair ; the gunners bronzed, stalwart, 
and in perfect fighting case. The 9th Lancers, with their 
gallant bearing, their flagless lances, and their lean but 
hardy horses, looked the perfection of regular cavalry on 
active service. Wild and bold was the bearing of the Sikh 
horsemen, clad in loose fawn-coloured dress, with long boots, 
blue or red turbans and sashes ; and armed with carbine 
and tulwar. Next to them were the worn and wasted 
remains of the 8th and 75th Queen's, who, with wearied 
air, stood grouped under their colours. Then came the two 
regiments of Punjab infantry, tall of stature, with fierce 
eager eyes under their huge turbans — men swift in the 
march, forward in the fight, and eager for the pillage. On 
the left of the line, in massive serried ranks, a waving sea 
of plumes and tartan, stood the 93 rd Highlanders, who 
with loud and rapturous cheers welcomed the veteran com- 
mander whom they knew so well and loved so warmly. 



214 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

On November 1 2 Campbell had reached the Alum- 
bagh, and, halting there, decided on the line of his 
advance to the Kesidency. Instead of advancing 
direct on the city, and fighting his way through loop- 
holed and narrow lanes, each one a mere valley of 
death, he proposed to swing round to the right, march 
in a wide curve through the open ground, and seize 
what was known as the Dilkusha Park, a great en- 
closed garden, surrounded by a wall 20 feet high, 
a little over two miles to the east of the Kesidency. 
Using this as his base, he would next move round to 
the north of the city, forcing his way through a series 
of strong posts, the most formidable of which were 
the Secundrabagh and the Shah Nujeef, and so reach 
the Residency. And the story of the fighting at those 
two points makes up the tragedy and glory of the 
Relief of Lucknow. 

Outram, of course, was not the man to lie inertly 
within his defences while Campbell was moving to 
his relief. He had already sent plans of the city and 
its approaches, with suggestions as to the best route, 
to Campbell by means of a spy, and he was prepared 
to break out on the line by which the relieving force 
was to advance. But if Campbell could be supplied 
with a guide, who knew the city as he knew the palm 
of his own hand, this would be an enormous advan- 
tage ; and exactly such a guide at this moment pre- 
sented himself. A civilian named Kavanagh offered 
to undertake this desperate mission. 



LUCKNOW AND SIR COLIN CAMPBELL 21 5 

Kavanagh was an Irishman, a clerk in one of the 
civil offices, and apparently possessed a hundred dis- 
qualifications for the business of making his way, dis- 
guised as a native, through the dark-faced hordes 
that kept sleepless watch round the Residency, and 
through the busy streets of Lucknow beyond. He 
was a big-limbed, fair man, with aggressively red 
hair, and uncompromisingly blue eyes ! By what his- 
trionic art could he be " translated," in Shakespeare's 
sense, into a spindle-shanked, narrow-shouldered, 
dusky-skinned Oude peasant ? But Kavanagh was a 
man of quenchless courage, with a more than Irish 
delight in deeds of daring, and he had a perfect know- 
ledge of native dialect and character. He has left a 
narrative of his adventure. 

A spy had come in from Campbell, and was to 
return that night, and Kavanagh conceived the idea 
of going out with him, and acting as guide to the 
reheving force. Outram hesitated to permit the 
attempt to be made, declaring it to be too dangerous ; 
but Kavanagh's eagerness for the adventure prevailed. 
He hid the whole scheme from his wife, and, at half- 
past seven o'clock that evening, when he entered Out- 
ram's headquarters, he was so perfectly disguised that 
nobody recognised him. He had blackened his face, 
neck, and arms with lamp-black, mixed with a little 
oil. His red hair, which even lamp-black and oil 
could hardly subdue to a colder tint, was concealed 
beneath a huge turban. His dress was that of a 



2l6 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

budmash, or irregular native soldier, with sword and 
shield, tight trousers, a yellow-coloured chintz sheet 
thrown over the shoulders, and a white cummerbund. 

A little after eight o'clock Kavanagh, with his native 
guide, crept to the bank of the Goomtee, which ran 
to the north of the Kesidency entrenchment. The 
river was a hundred yards wide, and between four 
feet and five feet deep. Both men stripped, crept 
down the bank, and slipped, as silently as otters, into 
the stream. Here for a moment, as Kavanasfh in his 
narrative confesses, his courage failed him. The 
shadowy bank beyond the black river was held by 
some 60,000 merciless enemies. He had to pass 
through their camps and guards, and through miles 
of city streets beyond. If detected, he would certainly 
perish by torture. " If my guide had been within my 
reach," he says, " I should perhaps have pulled him 
back and abandoned the enterprise." But the guide 
was already vanishing, a sort of crouching shadow, 
into the blackness of the further bank ; and, harden- 
ing his heart, Kavanagh stole on through the sliding 
gloom of the river. 

Both men crept up a ditch that pierced the river- 
bank to a cluster of trees, and there dressed ; and 
then, with his tulwar on his shoulder and the swagger 
of a budmash, Kavanagh went boldly forward with 
his guide. A matchlock man first met the adventu- 
rous pair and peered suspiciously at them from under 
his turban. Kavanagh in a loud voice volunteered 



LUCKNOW AND SIR COLIN CAMPBELL 217 

the remark that " the night was cold," and passed on. 
They had to cross the iron bridge which spanned the 
Goomtee, and the officer on guard challenged them 
lazily from the balcony of a two-storeyed house. 
Kavanagh himself hung back in the shade, while his 
guide went forward and told the story of how they 
belonged to a village some miles distant, and were 
going to the city from their homes. 

They were allowed to pass, ran the gauntlet of 
many troops of Sepoys, re-crossed the Goomtee by 
what was called the stone bridge, and passed unsus- 
pected along the principal street of Lucknow, jostling 
their way through the crowds, and so reached the 
open fields beyond the city. "I had not been in 
green fields," writes Kavanagh, "for five months. 
Everything around us smelt sweet, and a carrot I 
took from the roadside was the most delicious thing 
I had ever tasted ! " But it was difficult to find their 
way in the night. They wandered into the Dilkusha 
Park, and stumbled upon a battery of guns, which 
Kavanagh, to the terror of his guide, insisted upon 
inspecting. 

They next blundered into the canal, but still wan- 
dered on, till they fell into the hands of a guard of 
twenty-five Sepoys, and Kavanagh's guide, in his 
terror, dropped in the dust of the road the letter he 
was carrying from Outram to Campbell. Kavanagh, 
however, kept his coolness, and after some parleying 
he and his guide were allowed to pass on. The 



2l8 THE TALE OF THE GEEAT MUTINY 

much-enduring pair next found themselves entangled 
in a swamp, and, waist-deep in its slime and weeds, 
they struggled on for two hours, when they reached 
solid ground again. Kavanagh insisted on lying 
down to rest for a time. Next they crept between 
some Sepoy pickets which, with true native careless- 
ness, had thrown out no sentries, and finally, just as 
the eastern sky was growing white with the coming 
day, the two adventurers heard the challenge, " Who 
comes there ? " from under the shadow of a great 
tree ! 

It was a British cavalry picket, and - Kavanagh 
had soon the happiness of pouring into Sir Colin 
Campbell's ears the messages and information he 
brought, while a flag, hoisted at twelve o'clock on 
the summit of the Alumbagh, told Outram that his 
messenger had succeeded, and that both the garri- 
son and the relieving force had now a common 
plan. It is difficult to imagine a higher example of 
human courage than that supplied by "Lucknow" 
Kavanagh, as he was afterwards called, and never 
was the Victoria Cross better won. 

On the afternoon of the 15 th Campbell made an 
elaborate reconnaissance on his extreme left, and all 
night he thundered in that direction with his guns, 
and the enemy gathered in full strength on that line, 
persuaded that the British would advance on it. 
But by daybreak on the i6th Campbell was moving 
ofi', light-footed and swift, by his right, exactly where 



LUCKNOW AND SIR COLIN CAMPBELL 219 

the enemy did not expect him ! He had little over 
3000 bayonets in his force, but he was strong in 
artillery, counting in all thirty-nine guns, six mortars, 
and two rocket-tubes, and he hoped to smash by the 
weight of his fire every obstacle that stood in his 
path to the Residency. Yet, be it remembered, he 
was moving on the arc of a great fortified central 
position, held by a hostile force not less than 60,000 
strong, or more than fifteen times more numerous 
than his own. 

Blunt's guns and a company of the 53rd formed 
Campbell's advance-guard. They crossed the canal, 
followed for a mile the river-bank, and then swung 
sharply to the left by a road which ran parallel to 
the rear of the Secundrabagh. This was a great 
garden, 150 yards on each face, with walls twenty 
feet high, and a circular bastion at each angle, and 
from its rear face, as the head of the British column 
came in sight, broke an angry tempest of musket- 
shot, a fire which, it must be remembered, smote the 
advancing British column on the flank. Cavalry and 
infantry were helpless in the narrow lane, and some- 
thing like a "jara" took place. Blunt, however, an 
ofiicer of great daring, with an enthusiastic belief 
that British guns could go anywhere and do anything, 
cut the knot of the difficulty. The bank of the lane 
was so steep that it seemed impossible that horses 
and guns could climb it, but Blunt, with cool decision, 
put the guns in motion, swung the horses' heads 



2 20 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

sharply round, and, with, whip and spur and shout, 
his gunners drove the snorting, panting horses up the 
bank into the open space under the fire of the 
Secundrabagh. 

Travers, with two of his i8-pounders, came stum- 
bhng and struggling up the steep bank after Blunt. 
The guns were swung round, and, within musket- 
shot distance of the crowded walls and under a 
tempest of bullets, they opened a breaching fire 
on the face of the Secundrabagh. The British in- 
fantry meanwhile, lying down under the bank of 
the lane, waited for the moment of assault, Forbes- 
Mitchell gives a very realistic picture of the march 
up the lane, and the waiting under the shelter of 
a low mud-wall while the breach was being made, 
through which they must charge. Campbell him- 
self, before the men moved up, had given amusingly 
prosaic instructions as to how they were to fight. 
When they swept into the Secundrabagh they were 
to "keep together in clusters of threes, and rely on 
nothing but the bayonet." The central man of each 
group of three was to attack, and his comrades, right 
and left, guard him with their bayonets, &c. 

As the 93rd moved up the lane, Forbes-Mitchell 
relates how they saw sitting on the roadside a naked 
Hindu, with shaven head and face streaked with 
white and red paint, busy counting his rosary, and 
unmoved by the tumult of battle. A Highlander 
said to a young staff-officer who was just passing, 



LUCKNOW AND SIK COLIN CAMPBELL 22 1 

"I would like to try my bayonet on the hide of 
that painted scoundrel, sir ; he looks a murderer." 
"Don't touch him," answered the staff-officer, "he 
is a harmless Hindu mendicant; it is the Moham- 
niedans who are to blame for the horrors of the 
Mutiny." Scarcely had he spoken the words when 
the Hindu stopped counting his beads, slipped his 
hands under the mat on which he sat, and, with 
a single movement, drew out a short bell-mouthed 
blunderbuss and fired into the unfortunate staff- 
officer's breast, killing him instantly, and himself 
dying a moment afterwards, under the reddened 
bayonets of half-a-dozen furious Highlanders. 

Sir Colin Campbell himself stood by the guns, 
watching the balls tearing away flakes from the 
stubborn bricks which formed the immense thick- 
ness of the wall. Every now and then he repressed 
the eagerness of the Highlanders or Sikhs, waiting 
to make their rush. "Lie down, 93rd!" he said. 
" Lie down ! Every man of you is worth his weight 
in gold to England to-day." For nearly three- 
quarters of an hour that strange scene lasted, the 
British guns battering the tough brick wall, while 
from hundreds of loopholes a tempest of bullets 
scourged the toiling gunners. Twice over the de- 
tachments at the guns had to be renewed before 
the breach could be made. 

The crouching infantry meanwhile could hardly 
be restrained. A sergeant of the 53rd, a Welsh- 



22 2 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

man named Dobbin, called out, "Let the infantry 
storm, Sir Colin ! Let the two Thirds at them " — 
meaning the 53rd and 93rd — " and we'll soon make 
short work of the murdering villains." Campbell, 
always good-tempered when the bullets were Hying, 
recognised the man, and asked, " Do you think the 
breach is wide enough, Dobbin ? " 

The three regiments waiting for the rush Avere 
the 53rd, the 93rd, and a Sikh regiment — the 4th 
Rifles; and suddenly they leaped up and joined in 
one eager dash at the slowly widening breach. 
Whether the signal to advance was given at all 
is doubtful, and which regiment led, and which 
brave soldier was first through the breach, are all 
equally doubtful points. 

Malleson says the rush on the Secundrabagh was 
" the most wonderful scene witnessed in the war." 
No order was given ; but suddenly the Sikhs and 
the Highlanders were seen racing for the breach at 
full speed, bonneted Highlander and brown-faced 
Sikh straining every nerve to reach it first. A Sikh 
of the 4th Rifles, he adds, outran the leading High- 
lander, leaped through the breach, and was shot 
dead as he sprang. An ensign of the 93rd, named 
Cooper, was a good second, and, leaping feet first 
through the hole like a gymnast, got safely through. 

Hope Grant says that " before the order was given 
a native Sikh officer started forward, sword in hand, 
followed by his men." The 93rd determined not 



LUCKNOW AND SIR COLIN CAMPBELL 223 

to let ttie Sikhs outcharge them, and instantly ran 
forward. The Sikhs had a few yards' start, but " a 
sergeant of the 93rd, Sergeant-Major Murray, a fine 
active fellow, outstripped them, jumped through the 
opening like a harlequin, and, as he landed on the 
other side, was shot through the breast and fell 
dead." Archibald Forbes says the first man through 
the breach was an Irishman, Lance-Corporal Don- 
nelly, of the 93rd, killed as he jumped through the 
breach ; the second was a Sikh, the third a Scotch- 
man, Sergeant-Major Murray, also killed. Who shall 
decide when there is such a conflict of testimony 
betwixt the very actors in the great scene ! 

Roberts confirms Hope Grant in the statement 
that a Highlander was the first to reach the goal, and 
was shot dead as he reached the enclosure ; and he 
adds one curiously pathetic detail. A drummer-boy 
of the 93rd, he says, " must have been one of the first 
to pass that grim, boundary between life and death ; 
for when I got in I found him just inside the breach, 
lying on his back, quite dead, a pretty, innocent-look- 
ing, fair-haired lad, not more than fourteen years 
old." What daring must have burned in that lad's 
Scottish blood when he thus took his place in the 
very van of the wild rush of veterans into the Sec- 
undrabagh ! 

Forbes-Mitchell, who actually took part in the 
charge, gives yet another account. The order to 
charge, he says, was given, and the Sikhs, who caught 



2 24 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

it first, leaped over the mud-wall, behind which they 
were lying, shouting their war-cry, and, led by their 
two British officers, ran eagerly towards the breach. 
Both the'.r officers were shot before they had run 
many yards, and at that the Sikhs halted. "As soon 
as Sir Colin saw them waver, he turned to the 93rd, 
and said, ' Colonel Ewart, bring on the tartan ! Let 
my own lads at them.' " Before the command could 
be repeated, or the buglers had time to sound the 
advance, " the whole seven companies like one man 
leaped over the wall with such a yell of pent-up rage 
as I never heard before nor since. It was not a cheer, 
but a concentrated yell of rage and ferocity, that 
made the echoes ring again ; and it must have struck 
terror into the defenders, for they actually ceased 
firing, and we could see them through the breach 
rushing fi 3m the outside wall to take shelter in the 
two-storeyed building in the centre of the garden, 
the gats and doors of which they firmly barred." 

The Secundrabagh, it must be remembered, was 
held by four strong Sepoy regiments, numbering in 
all from 2000 to 3000 men, many of them veteran 
soldiers, Avearing the medals they had won in British 
service, and they fought with desperate courage. 
The human jet of stormers through the gap in the 
wall Avas a mere tiny squirt, but the main body of 
the 93rd blew in the lock of the great gate with their 
bullets, and came sweeping in. 

Lord Roberts gives another version of this incident. 



LUCKNOW AND SIR COLIN CAMPBELL 225 

The Sepoys, lie says, were driven out of the earth- 
work which covered the gateway, and were swept 
back into the Secundrabagh, and the heavy doors of 
the great gateway were being hurriedly shut in the 
face of the stormers. A subahdar of the 4th Punjab 
Infantry reached the gate in time enough to thrust 
his left arm, on which was carried a shield, between 
the closing doors. His hand was slashed across by a 
tulwar from within, whereupon he drew it out, in- 
stantly thrusting in the other arm, when his right 
hand, in turn, was all but severed from the wrist ! 
But he kept the gates from being shut, and in 
another minute the men of the 93rd, of the 53rd, 
and of the gallant Punjabee's own regiment went 
storming in. 

The men of the 53rd again tried, with success, 
another device. They lifted their caps on the tips 
of their bayonets to a line of iron-barred windows 
above their heads, and thus drew the fire of their de- 
fenders. Then they leaped up, tore away the bars, 
and, clambering on each other's shoulders, broke 
through. Forbes- Mitchell was the fifth or sixth man 
through the breach, and was immediately fired upon 
point-blank by a Sepoy lying in the grass half-a- 
dozen yards distant. The bullet struck the thick 
brass buckle on his belt, and such was the force of 
the blow that it tumbled him head over heels. 
Colonel Ewart came next to Forbes-Mitchell, who 
heard his colonel say, as he rushed past him, " Poor 



2 26 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

fellow ! lie is done for." Ewart, a gallant Highlander, 
of commanding stature, played a great part in the 
struggle within the Secundrabagh. His bonnet was 
shot or struck off his head, and, bareheaded, amidst 
the push and sway and madness of the fight, he bore 
himself like a knight of old. 

The fight within the walls of the Secundrabagh 
raged for nearly two hours, and the sounds that 
floated up from it as the Sepoys, "fighting like 
devils " — to quote an actor in the scene, — were driven 
from floor to floor of the building, or across the green 
turf of the garden, were appalling. The fighting 
passion amongst the combatants often took queer 
shapes. Thus one man, known amongst the 93rd as 
" the Quaker," from his great quietness, charged into 
the Secundrabagh like a kilted and male Fury, and, 
according to Forbes-Mitchell, quoting a verse of the 
Scottish psalm with every thrust of his bayonet or 
shot from his rifle : — 

" I'll of salvation take the cup, 
On God's name M'ill I call ; 
I'll pay my vows now to the Lord 
Before His people all." 

Scottish psalm, punctuated with bayonet thrusts: 
this surely is the strangest battle-hymn ever heard ! 

Ewart found that two native ofiicers had carried 
the regimental flao^ into a narrow and dark room, and 
were defending themselves like wild cats. Ewart 
leaped single-handed into the room, and captured 



LUCKNOW AND SIR COLIN CAMPBELL 2 2/ 

the colours, slaying both officers. The fight within 
the Secundrabagh was by this time practically over, 
and Ewart ran outside, and bareheaded, with blood- 
stained uniform and smoke-blackened face, ran up to 
Sir Colin as he sat on his grey horse, and cried, " We 
are in possession, sir ! I have killed the last two of 
the enemy with my own hand, and here is one of 

their colours." " D your colours, sir ! " was the 

wrathful response of Sir Colin. " It's not your place 
to be taking colours. Go back to your regiment this 
instant, sir." Sir Colin had a Celtic shortness of 
temper ; the strain of waiting while the madness of 
the fight raged within the great walls had told on his 
nerves. He was eager to get his 93rd into regi- 
mental shape again ; and, as Forbes- Mitchell argues, 
believed, from his appearance and bearing, that Ewart 
was drunk ! So he was : but it was with the passion 
of battle ! 

The officers of Sir Colin's staff read Ewart's con- 
dition more truly, and as this ragged, blood-stained 
figure, carrying the captured flag, came running out 
from the furnace of the great fight, they cheered 
vehemently. Later in the day Sir Colin himself 
apologised to Ewart for his brusqueness. 

In the whole record of war there are not many 
scenes of slaughter to be compared with that which 
took place within the walls of the Secundrabagh. 
The 53rd held the north side of the great quadrangle^ 
the Sikhs and the 93rd the east side, and a mixed 



228 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

force, composed of several regiments, held the south ; 
on the west there Avas no escape. The great mass of 
Sepoys in the centre of the quadrangle was thus 
pelted with lead and fire from the three fronts. " We 
fired volley after volley into the dense multitude," 
says Jones-Parry, "until nothing was left but a 
moving mass, like mites in a cheese ! " 

Of the 2000 or 2500 Sepoys who formed the garri- 
son of the Secundrabagh not one man escaped. Its 
whole area, when the fight was over, was red with 
blood and strewn with the bodies of slain men. Four 
whole regiments of mutineers were simply blotted 
out. Many of the slain Sepoys wore Punjab medals 
on their breasts ; many, too, were found to have leave 
certificates, signed by former commanding officers, 
in their pockets, showing they had been on leave 
when the regiment mutinied, and had rejoined their 
regiment to fight against the British. The walls of 
the Secundrabagh still stand, a long, low mound 
along one side showing where the great company of 
slain Sepoys were buried. What other patch of the 
earth's surface, of equal size, has ever witnessed more 
of human valour and of human despair than those 
few square yards of turf that lie within the shot-bat- 
tered walls of this ancient Indian pleasure-garden ! 

The British losses, curiously enough, were compara- 
tively light, except amongst the officers. The 93rd 
had nine officers killed and wounded. The 4th 
Punjab infantry went into the fight with four British 



LUCKNOW AND SIR COLIN CAMPBELL 229 

officers ; two were killed, one was desperately wounded, 
and the regiment was brought out of the fight by the 
sole surviving officer, Lieut. Willoughby, himself only 
a lad. He was recommended for the V.C., but did 
not live to wear that much-coveted decoration, as 
he was slain in fight shortly afterwards. 

But the strongest post held by the rebels, in the 
track along which the British were moving towards 
the Residency, was the Shah Nujeef, a great and 
massively-built mosque, girdled with a high loop- 
holed wall, and screened by trees and enclosures of 
various kinds. Campbell brought up Peel, with his 
Naval Brigade, to make a breach in the massive 
walls of the Shah Nujeef, and that gallant sailor ran 
his guns up within twenty yards of the loopholed 
walls of the great mosque, and, swinging them round, 
opened fire, while the gunners were shot down in 
quick succession as they toiled to load and discharge 
their pieces. " It was an action," said Sir Colin in 
his despatch afterwards, "almost unexampled in 
war." Peel, in a word, behaved very much as if 
he were laying the Shannon alongside an enemy's 
frigate ! 

As the men ran up their guns to the walls of the 
Shah Nujeef, Forbes-Mitchell says he saw a sailor lad, 
just in front of him, who had his leg carried clean off 
by a round shot, which struck him above the knee. 
"He sat bolt upright on the grass, with the blood 
spouting from the stump of his leg like water from 



230 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

the hose of a fire-engine, and shouted, ' Here goes a 
shilling a day, a shilling a day ! Remember Cawn- 
pore, 93rd ; remember Cawnpore ! Go at them, my 
hearties ; ' and then sank down and died." 

But the defence of the Shah Nujeef was stubborn, 
and for three hours Peel worked his guns under a 
double cross-fire, and still his i8-pounders failed to 
pierce the solid walls of the great mosque. The 93rd 
were brought up, and, lying down under what shelter 
they could secure, tried to keep down the musketry 
fire from the walls, and many of them Avere shot down 
by bullets or arrows from the summit of the mosque. 
The external toasonry had flaked, off, leaving a rough, 
irregular face, up which an active cat might possibly 
have scrambled; and at this a battalion of detach- 
ments — in which clusters from a dozen regiments 
were combined — under the command of Major Bran- 
ston, was launched. The men ran forward with 
utmost daring, but the wall was twenty feet high; 
there were no scaling-ladders. It was impossible to 
climb the broken face of the masonry. Branston 
fell, shot, and his second in command, the present 
Lord Wolseley, kept up the attack, making desperate 
attempts to escalade. 

A tree stood at an angle of the Shah Nujeef, close 
to the wall, and giving the chance of firing over it. 
Peel offered the Victoria Cross to any of his men who 
would climb it. Two lieutenants and a leading sea- 
man named Harrison in a moment, with seamanlike 



LUCKNOW AND SIR COLIN CAMPBELL 23 1 

activity, clambered up the tree, and opened a deadly 
fire on the enemy. Each man of the three was in 
turn shot, but not till they had accomplished the task 
they had undertaken. 

Nightfall was coming on. It was impossible to 
turn back ; it seemed equally impossible to carry the 
Shah Nujeef. Peel's guns, firing for nearly three 
hours at point-blank range, had failed to tear the 
stubborn masonry to pieces. The answering fire, both 
of cannon and musketry, from either flank, which 
covered the face of the great mosque being assailed, 
grew heavier every moment. Campbell then called 
upon the 93rd, and told them he would lead them 
himself, as the place must be carried. The lives of 
the women and children inside the Eesidency were at 
stake. A dozen voices from the ranks called out that 
they would carry the place, right enough, but Sir 
Colin must not expose his own life. '•' We can lead 
ourselves," cried one after another. Whether even 
the 93rd could have clambered over the lofty and 
unbroken walls of the Shah Nujeef may be doubted, 
but at this moment the wit and daring of a Scotch 
soldier saved the situation. 

There are conflicting versions of the incident, but 
Forbes-Mitchell shall tell the story : — 

Just at that moment Sergeant John Paton, of my com- 
pany, came running down the ravine at the moment the 
battalion of detachments had been ordered to storm. He 
had discovered a breach in the north-east corner of the 



232 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

rampart, next to tlie river Goomtee. It appears that ovir 
shot and shell had gone over the first breach, and had 
blown out the wall on the other side in this particular spot. 
Paton told how he had climbed up to the top of the ram- 
parts without difficulty, and seen right inside the place, as 
the whole defending force had been called forward to re- 
pulse the assault in front. Captain Dawson and his com- 
pany were at once called out, and while the others opened 
fire on the breach in front of them, we dashed down the 
ravine, Sergeant Paton showing the way. As soon as the 
enemy saw that the breach behind had been discovered, 
and their well-defended position was no longer tenable, they 
fled like sheep through the back gate next to the Goomtee, 
and another in the direction of the Mootee -Munzil. If 
JSTo. 7 company had got in behind them and cut off their 
retreat by the back gate, it would have been Secundrabagh 
over again. 

Paton received the Victoria Cross for that signal 
service. He was a soldier of the finest type, took part 
in more than thirty engagements, and passed through 
them all without so much as a scratch. Paton emi- 
grated in 1 86 1 to Melbourne; a little later he entered 
the service of the New South Wales Government, 
and became Governor of Goulburn Gaol, retiring on 
a pension in February 1 896. 

A quiet night followed a day so fierce. The troops 
were exhausted. Their rifles, in addition, had become 
so foul with four days' heavy work that it was almost 
impossible to load them. The next day, however, the 
advance was continued, and position after position 
wa£ carried, the last being what was known as the 



LUCKNOW AND SIR COLIN CAMPBELL 233 

Mess-liouse. Tliis was carried by a wing of the 53rd, 
led by Captain Hopkins — "one of tlie bravest men 
that ever lived," says Malleson ; " a man who literally 
revelled in danger." From the summit of the Mess- 
house the Union Jack was hoisted as a signal to 
the Residency, but on the flag the exasperated Sepoys 
concentrated their fire, and twice in succession it was 
shot down. Forbes-Mitchell says that a previous and 
successful attempt to signal to the Residency had been 
made from the Shah Nujeef. The adjutant of the 
93rd, Lieutenant M'Bean, a sergeant, and a little 
drummer-boy, twelve years old, named Ross, and tiny 
for his age, climbed to the summit of the dome of the 
Shah Nujeef, put a Highland bonnet on the tip of the 
staff, waved the regimental colour of the 93rd, while 
the boy sounded the regimental call shrilly on his 
bugle. 

The signal was seen and answered from the Resi- 
dency, its flag being raised and lowered three times ; 
but every Sepoy battery within range instantly opened 
on the three figures on the summit of the dome. They 
quickly descended, but little Ross turned, ran up 
the ladder again like a monkey, and, holding on to 
the spire of the dome with his left hand, blew the call 
known as "The Cock of the North" as a blast of 
defiance to the enemy ! 

Outram meanwhile was pushing cautiously on in 
the direction of Campbell's attack, occupying build- 
ing after building : and late in the afternoon Outram 



2 34 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

and Havelock and Campbell had clasped hands on 
the sloping ground in front of the Mess-house. A 
hole had to be broken through the western wall 
of the Pearl Palace enclosure to let the chiefs of 
the beleaguered garrison through, and a slab in the 
wall still marks the spot. Campbell, Havelock, and 
Outram met on the slope outside the Mess-house, 
and the meeting of three such soldiers under such 
conditions was a memorable event. No red-coated 
Boswell, unhappily, has told us how the veterans 
greeted each other. The Kaisarbagh, strongly held 
by the mutineers, overlooked the little patch of 
rough soil on which the three famous soldiers stood, 
and every gun that could be trained upon the group 
broke into fire. It was to an accompaniment of 
bellowing cannon, of bursting shells, and of whistling 
bullets that Campbell, Havelock, and Outram ex- 
changed their first greeting. 

Young Roberts, with Captain Norman, accom- 
panied Outram and Havelock back to the Resi- 
dency, and he has described how he passed from 
post to post, held with such long - enduring and 
stubborn courage by the relieved garrison. " When 
we came," he says, " to the Bailey Guard, and looked 
at the battered walls and gateway, not an inch 
without a mark of a round shot or bullet, we 
marvelled that Aitken and Loughnan could have 
managed to defend it for nearly five months." It 
was found difficult to get the relieved garrison to 



LUCKNOW AND SIR COLIN CAMPBELL 235 

talk of their own experiences ; they were too hungry 
for news from the outside world ! Jones-Parry says, 
" The first man of the garrison I met was my old 
schoolfellow and chum, Meecham. He was an ex- 
cellent specimen of the condition of the defenders, 
for he looked more like a greyhound than a man. 
He was thin as a lath, and his eyes looked sunken 
into his head." 

Lucknow was relieved ; but to reach the Resi- 
dency had cost Sir Colin Campbell a loss of 45 
officers and 496 men. Campbell found his posi- 
tion difficult. He had broken through the besieging 
force ; he had not ended the siege. To hold the 
Residency meant to be besieged himself. He de- 
cided to bring off the Residency garrison, with the 
women and children, abandoning the shot-wrecked 
walls and foul trenches to the enemy. To evacuate 
the Residency, carrying off in safety, through the 
lines of a hostile force five times as numerous as 
his own, 600 women and children, and more than 
1000 sick or wounded men, was a great feat, but 
Sir Colin Campbell accomplished it, and did it so 
adroitly that not a casualty was incurred, and not 
a serviceable gun abandoned. So completely, in 
fact, did Sir Colin Campbell deceive the enemy 
that their guns were pouring their fire angrily on 
the Residency for at least four hours after the last 
British soldier had left it ! 

Havelock died just as he was being carried out 



236 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

of the slender and battered defences lie had reached 
and held so gallantly. He died of an attack of 
dysentery, brought on, says Major Anson, "by run- 
ning nearly three-quarters of a mile under fire from 
the Residency to meet the Commander-in-Chief and 
greet him as his deliverer." 

He lies buried in the Alumbagh, the place Have- 
lock himself won by an assault so daring when 
advancing to relieve Lucknow. He was buried on 
the morning of November 25, and round his rude 
coffin, on which the battle-flag lay, stood his sor- 
rowing comrades, a group of the most gallant soldiers 
that earthly battlefields have ever known — Camp- 
bell, and Outram, and Peel, and Adrian Hope, and 
Fraser Tytler, and the younger Havelock, with men 
of the Ross-shire Buffs and of the Madras Fusileers, 
whom Havelock had so often led to victory. On 
a tree that grew beside the grave the letter H 
was roughly carved, to mark where Havelock's body 
lay. To-day the interior of the Alumbagh is a 
garden, and a shapely obelisk marks the spot where 
sleeps the dust of one of the bravest soldiers that 
ever fought for the honour and flag of England. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE SEPOY IN THE OPEN 

THE losses of the beleaguered Englisli during the 
siege of the Residency were, of course, great. 
When the siege began the garrison consisted of 927 
Europeans — not three out of four being soldiers — 
and 765 natives. Up to the date of the relief by 
Havelock — 87 days — 350 Europeans, more than one 
out of every three of the whole European force, were 
killed or died of disease ! 

It is curious to note how all the swiftly-changing 
events and passions of the Mutiny are reflected in 
such of the diaries and journals of the period as have 
been published ; and frequently a view of the actors 
in the great drama and of their actions is obtained 
from this source, such as grave historians, much to 
the loss of their readers, never give us. One of the 
best diaries of the kind is that of Lady Canning, as 
published in " The Story of Two Noble Lives," by 
Augustus J. C. Hare. This journal gives us dainty 
little vignettes of the principal figures in the Mutiny, 
with pictures of. all the alternating moods of fear and 
hope, of triumph and despair, as, moment by mo- 
ment, they were experienced by the little circle of 



238 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

Government House in Calcutta. Here, for example, 
is a quaint picture of Havelock, whicli Lady Canning 
draws when the news reached Calcutta of his 
death: — 

Nov. 27. — We had a grievous piece of news from 
Alumbagh. Havelock died two days ago. He died of 
dysentery, worn out in mind and body. ... It is curious 
now to remember how his appointment was abused here, 
when he was called " an old fossil dug up and only fit 
to be turned into pipe-clay." I knew him better than 
almost any one, and used to try and keep him in good- 
humour when he seemed a little inclined to be affronted. 
He was very small, and upright, and stiff, very white and 
grey, and really like an iron ramrod. He always dined in 
his sword, and made his son do the same. He wore more 
medals than ever I saw on any one, and it was a joke that 
he looked as if he carried all his money round his neck. 
He certainly must have had eleven or twelve of those 
great round half-crown pieces. 

Lady Canning goes on to picture Campbell's 
march back to Cawnpore, with his groat convoy of 
wounded men and women and children, and her 
woman's imagination fastens naturally on this long 
procession of helpless human beings. " Sir Colin," 
she writes, " has sent off four miles long of women 
and wounded ! " Later on she reports the procession 
as fourteen miles long ! And no doubt the business 
of transporting such a host of helpless creatures out 
of a city which contained 60,000 hostile troops, and 
across nearly fifty miles of an enemy's country, 



THE SEPOY IN THE OPEN 239 

was a feat calculated to impress tlie human ima- 
gination. 

Campbell had one tremendous source of anxiety. 
He had to carry his huge convoy of non-combatants, 
guns, treasure, and material across the slender, sway- 
ing line of boats which bridged the Ganges at Cawn- 
pore before safety was reached. That bridge, indeed, 
formed his only possible line of retreat. If it were 
destroyed or fell into the enemy's hands, the tragedy 
of Cabul — where only one man escaped out of an 
army — might have been repeated. 

Campbell had left Windham to guard the bridge 
and hold Cawnpore, but Windham had only 500 men 
— a force scarcely stronger in fighting power than 
that with which Wheeler held the fatal entrench- 
ments — and within easy striking distance was the 
Gwalior contingent, numbering, with a fringe of 
irregulars, some 25,000 men, with forty guns, the 
most formidable and best-drilled force, on the Sepoy 
side, in the whole Mutiny. At its head, too, was 
Tantia Topee, the one real soldier on the enemy's 
side the Mutiny produced, with quite enough war- 
like skill to see the opportunity offered him of 
striking a fatal blow at Campbell's communications. 
If Windham's scanty force had been crushed, and 
the bridge destroyed, Campbell's position would have 
been, in a military sense, desperate, and the tragedy 
of Cawnpore might have been repeated in darker 
colours and on a vaster scale. Sound generalship 



240 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

required Campbell to smash the formidable force 
which threatened Cawnpore before advancing on 
Lucknow; but Campbell took all risks in order to 
succour the beleaguered Residency. 

Having plucked the beleaguered garrison out of 
the very heart of the enemy's forces, it may be ima- 
gined with what eagerness Campbell now set his face 
towards Cawnpore again. There was no safety for 
his helpless convoy till the bridge was crossed. For 
days, too, all communications with Windham had 
been intercepted. An ominous veil of unpierced 
silence hung between the retreating English and 
their base. Campbell set out from the Alumbagh on 
the morning of November 27. All day the great 
column crept along over the desolate plain towards 
the Ganges. At nightfall they had reached Bunnee 
Bridge, and that " veil of silence " was for a moment 
lifted. Or, rather, through it there stole a faint deep 
sound, full of menace, the voice of cannon answering 
cannon ! Windham was attacked ! He was perhaps 
fighting for his life at the bridge-head ! 

All through the night those far-off and sullen vibra- 
tions told how the fight was being maintained, and 
with what eagerness the march was resumed next 
morning may be guessed. Forbes-Mitchell relates 
how Campbell addressed the 93rd, and told them 
they must reach Cawnpore that night at all costs. 
The veteran was fond of taking his Highlanders into 
his confidence ; and he went on to explain : — 



THE SEPOY IN THE OPEN 24 1 

" If the bridge of boats should be captured before we 
got there we would be cut off in Oude with 50,000 of our 
enemies in our rear, a well-equipped army of 40,000 men, 
with a powerful train of artillery, numbering over 40 siege 
guns, in our front, and with all the women and children, 
sick and wounded to guard. So, 93rd," said the grand old 
chief, " I don't ask you to undertake this forced march in 
your present tired condition without good reason. You 
must reach Cawnpore to-night at all costs." " All right. 
Sir Colin," shouted one voice after another from the ranks ; 
" we'll do it ! " 

The men, it must be remembered, had not had then- 
clothes off or changed their socks for eighteen days, 
and what a tax on the fortitude of the men that forced 
march was, can hardly be realised. Alison tells the 
story very graphically : — 

Not a moment was to be lost. The danger was instant, 
and the whole army eagei'ly pressed on towards the scene 
of danger. At every step the sound of a heavy but distant 
cannonade became more distinct ; but mile after mile was 
passed over, and no news could be obtained. The anxiety 
and impatience of all became extreme. Louder and louder 
grew -the roar — faster and faster became the march — long 
and weary was the way — tired and footsore grew the in- 
fantry — death fell on the exhausted wounded with terrible 
rapidity — the travel-worn bearers could hardly stagger 
along under their loads — the sick men groaned and died. 
But still on, on, on, was the cry. Salvoes of artillery were 
fired by the field battery of the advanced guard in hopes 
that its sound might convey to the beleaguered garrison a 
promise of the coming aid. At last some horsemen Avere 



242 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

seen spurring along the road ; then the veil which had for 
so long shrouded us from Windham was rent asunder, and 
the disaster stood before us in all its deformity. 

The story of Windham's disastrous tight at Cawn- 
pore is a sort of bloody appendix to Campbell's march 
on Lucknow. It must be told here to make the tale 
complete. 

Windham was a soldier of a fine, if not of the 
highest type, a man of immense energy and of cool 
daring which, if it always saw the peril, scorned to 
turn aside on account of it. His sobriquet was 
" Redan " Windham, and no one who has read the 
story of how, on September 8, 185 5, he led the British 
stormers through the embrasures of the Redan can 
doubt that Windham's courage was of a lion-like 
quality. He was the first of the stormers of the 
Second Division to cross the great ditch in front of 
the Redan, and the first to clamber through an em- 
brasure. When his men — young soldiers belonging 
to half-a-dozen separate regiments — hung back under 
the great ramparts of the Redan, Windham thrice ran 
forward alone with his brandished sword into the 
centre of the work, calling on the men to follow. 
He has told the story of how, again and again, 
he went back to his men, patted them on the back, 
and begged them to follow him. 

Five times he sent to the rear for reinforcements, 
and it shows the coolness of the man in the hell of 
that great fight that, determined at last to go himself 



THE SEPOY IN THE OPEN 243 

in search of additional troops, he first turned to an 
officer standing near and asked his name. Then he 
said to him, " I have sent five times for support, now 
bear witness that I am not in a funk " — at which the 
officer smiled — " but I will now go back myself and 
see what I can do." 

He went back, but before he could bring up new 
troops, the men still clinging to the Redan gave 
Avay, and the attack failed. Windham's judgment was 
challenged, but he was as brave as his own sword. He 
no doubt had his limitations as an officer. Russell, 
a perfectly good critic, says that he " seemed always 
to have something to do in addition to something that 
he had done already." There was a certain note of 
hurry in his character, that is, which does not add to 
the efficiency of a leader. His failing as an officer, 
Russell adds, was "reckless gallantry and dash" — 
grave faults, no doubt, in a general, but faults which 
are not without their compensations in a mere leader 
of fighting men. This was the man whom Campbell 
chose to keep the bridge at Cawnpore while he made 
his dash for the relief of Lucknow. 

Windham's force consisted of 500 men, made up of 
convalescent artillerymen, some sailors, and four com- 
panies of the 64th. Some earthworks had been 
thrown up to guard the bridge-head, but, in a military 
sense, the position was scarcely defensible. Wind- 
ham's orders were to forward with the utmost speed 
to Campbell all reinforcements as they came up ; to 



244 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

keep a vigilant watch on the Gwalior contingent, and 
hold the bridge to his last man and the last cartridge. 

Windham sent on the reinforcements for a time, 
loyally, but as the Gwalior contingent — which had 
now been joined by Nana Sahib and all his forces — 
began to press more menacingly upon him, he 
strengthened himself by holding the troops as they 
came up ; until, at the moment when the fight com- 
menced, he had a force of some 1700 men. On No- 
vember 19, the Gwalior contingent and their allies 
were distributed in a semicircle round Cawnpore — 
the nearest body being fifteen miles distant, the main 
body some twenty-five miles off. 

Windham, always disposed to attack rather than 
wait to be attacked, first formed a plan for leaping 
on these hostile forces in detail. He could move 
from the interior of the circle ; they were scattered 
round a segment of its circumference. Windham 
left 300 men to hold the bridge-head, and, with the 
main body of his force, took a position outside the 
town, in readiness for his dash. Two divisions of the 
enemy were about fifteen miles to the north, on 
cither side of a canal running parallel to the Ganges. 
Windham proposed to place 1200 men in boats on 
the canal at nightfall, quietly steal up through the 
darkness, and in the morning leap on the enemy on 
either bank in turn and destroy them, then fall 
swiftly back on his base. 

It was a pretty plan, but Tantia Topee had his 



THE SEPOY IN THE OPEN 245 

military ideas too. He thrust forward the Gwahor 
contingent along the road from the west, and on 
November 25 their leading division crossed the 
Pando River only three miles from Windham's camp 
outside Cawnpore. Windham promptly swung round 
to his left, marched fiercely out — 1200 men with 
eight guns against 20,000 with twenty-five guns— and 
fell impetuously on the head of the enemy's nearest 
column. He crumpled it up with the energy of his 
stroke, and drove it, a confused mass, in retreat, 
leaving three guns in Windham's hands. 

But from a ridge of high ground Windham was 
able to see the real strength of the enemy. He had 
crushed its leading division of 3000 men, but behind 
them was the main body of 17,000 men with twenty 
guns moving steadily forward. Windham's killed and 
wounded already amounted to nearly 100 men, and 
he had no choice but to fall back. His scanty little 
battery of six light guns, with undrilled gunners, 
could not endure the fire of the heavy artillery 
opposed to them. 

Windham, with characteristic tenacity, would not 
abandon the city and fall back on his entrenchments. 
He took a position on open ground outside the town, 
across what was called the Calpee road — the road, 
that is, running to the north — and waited the 
development of the enemy's plans. In the town 
were enormous stores — the supplies for Campbell's 
force, with Windham's own baggage. He ought, no 



246 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

doubt, to have sent all these back to the entrench- 
ments, and he admitted afterwards that he had blun- 
dered in not doing so ; and the blunder cost the 
British force dearly. 

The morning of the 27th dawned, and Windham 
stood to arms. He could get no information as to 
the enemy's movements. He had no cavalry, and 
his spies crept back to him horribly mutilated. He 
could only wait for Tantia Topee's stroke. That 
general proved throughout the day that he had a 
good soldierly head, and could frame a clever and 
daring plan of battle. 

Windham expected to be assailed on his left flank. 
But at ten o'clock the roar of cannon broke out on his 
right and on his front. A strong rebel force moving 
on the Calpee road from the north struck heavily on 
Windham's front, while a yet stronger force coming 
in from the east threw itself on his right flank. It 
was in the main an artillery attack, and the rebel fire 
was of overwhelming fury. At the front, the 88 th 
(the Connaught Rangers) and the Rifles, with a 
battery of four guns, held their own valiantly. Some 
companies of the 82nd and the 34th held the right 
flank, and here, too, the fight was gallantly sustained. 
Two battles, in brief, were in progress at the same 
moment, and at each of the assailed points the 
British numbered scarcely 600 bayonets, with two or 
three guns, while at each point the artillery fire of 
the enemy was of terrific severity. 



THE SEPOY IN THE OPEN 247 

For nearly five hours the tumult and passion of 
the battle raged. At the front the British ammuni- 
tion began, at last, to fail, the native drivers deserted, 
and Windham found it necessary to withdraw two 
companies from his right flank to strengthen his 
front. At that moment he discovered that Tantia 
Topee^who up to this stage had maintained the 
fight chiefly with his artillery, and had with great 
skill gathered a heavy mass of infantry on the left 
flank of the British — was developing a third attack 
at that point. He thrust his infantry, that is, past 
Windham's left, and tried to seize the town, so as to 
cut off the fighting front of the British from the 
bridge. 

Two companies of the 64th were brought up from 
the scanty garrison at the bridge-head to check this 
dangerous movement; and then Windham found 
that the enemy had broken in on his right flank, and 
were in possession of the lower portions of the town ! 

Windham was out-generalled, and had no choice 
but to fall back on his entrenchments, and he had 
to do this through narrow streets and broken ground 
while attacked in front and on both flanks by a 
victorious enemy ten times stronger than himself 
in bayonets, and more than ten times stronger in 
artillery. Adye says that the retreat to the en- 
trenchments "was made in perfect order, and not 
a man was lost in the operation " ; but on this 
subject there is the wildest conflict of evidence. 



248 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

Moore, the chaplain of Windham's force, says " the 
men got quite out of hand, and fled pell-mell for 
the fort. An old Sikh officer at the gate tried to 
stop them and to form them up in some order, 
and when they pushed him aside and brushed past 
him he lifted up his hands and said, 'You are not 
the brothers of the men who beat the Khalsa army 
and conquered the Punjab!'" Mr. Moore goes on 
to say that " the old Sikh followed the flying men 
through the fort gate, and, patting some of them 
on the back, said, ' Don't run, don't be afraid ; there 
is nothing to hurt you.' " If there was disorder the 
excuse is that the men were, for the most part, 
young soldiers without regimental cohesion — they 
were mere fragments of half-a-dozen regiments — 
they had been for five hours under an overwhelm- 
ing artillery fire, and were exhausted with want 
of food : and a retreat under such conditions, and 
through a hostile city, might well have taxed the 
steadiness of the best troops in the world. As a 
matter of fact, the men of the 64th, the 34th, 
and the 82nd held together Avitli the steadiness of 
veterans, and their slow and stubborn retreat, their 
fierce volleys and occasional dashes with the bayonets, 
quite cooled the ardour of the mutineers as they 
followed the retreating British. 

At one point, indeed, on the right flank of the 
British there was a clear case of misconduct, and 
the culprit was an ofiicer. His name in all the 




SIR HENRY LAWRENCE 



Reproduced by permission o/SiR Henry Waldemar Lawrence, y?-(7;« a drawing 
in his possession 



THE SEPOY IN THE OPEN 249 

published reports is concealed under the charity of 
asterisks, Campbell, in his despatch, says : — " Lieut.- 
Colonel * * * misconducted himself on the 26th 
and 27th November in a manner which has rarely 
been seen amongst the officers of Her Majesty's 
service ; his conduct was pusillanimous and imbecile 
to the last degree, and he actually gave orders for 
the retreat of his own regiment, and a portion of 
another, in the very face of the orders of his General, 
and when the troops were not seriously pressed by 
the enemy." 

Every man who wears a red coat and a pair of 
epaulettes is not necessarily a hero, and human 
courage, at best, is a somewhat unstable element. 
This particular officer had risen to high rank and 
seen much service, but some failure of nerve, some 
sudden clouding of brain, in the stress of that 
desperate fight, made him play — if only for a 
moment — the part both of an imbecile and a 
coward, and surrender a position which was essen- 
tial to the British defence. He was court-martialled 
after the fight and dismissed the service. 

Windham's retreat involved the sacrifice of all the 
military stores in the town, a great supply of ammu- 
nition, the mess plate, and the paymaster's chests 
and baggage of four Queen's regiments, &c. Some 
500 tents, as one item alone, were turned into a 
huge bonfire that night by the exultant rebels. But, 
thougfh Windham had fallen back to the entrench- 



2 so THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

ments at the bridge-head, he was as ready for fight 
as ever. He held a council of his officers that night 
and proposed to sally out under cover of darkness 
and fall on the enemy, a proposal which at least 
proves the unquenchable quality of his courage. 

This plan was not adopted, but, it being discovered 
that a gun had been overturned and abandoned in 
the streets of the city, Windham sent out lOO men 
of the 64th, with a few sailors, to bring that gun 
in. It was a feat of singular daring, carried out 
with singular success, and this is how the story of 
it is told by an officer who took part in the 
adventure : — 

We marched off under the guidance of a native, who 
said he would take us to the spot where the gun lay. We 
told him he should be well rewarded if he brought us to 
the gun, but if he brought us into a trap we had a soldier 
by him " at fuh cock " ready to blow his brains out. We 
passed our outside pickets, and entered the town through 
very narrow streets without a single Sepoy being seen, or 
a shot fired on either side. We crept along. Not a soul 
spoke a word. All was still as death ; and after marching 
this way into the very heai't of the town our guide brought 
us to the very spot where the gun was capsized. The 
soldiers were posted on each side, and then we went to 
work. Not a man spoke above his breath, and each stone 
was laid down quietly. When we thought we had cleared 
enough I ordered the men to put their shoulders to the 
wheel and gun, and when all was ready and every man had 
his pound before him I said " Heave ! " and up she righted. 
We then limbered up, called the soldiers to follow, and we 



THE SEPOY IN THE OPEN 25 I 

marched into the entrenchment with our gun without a 
shot being fired. 

On the morning of the 28th, Windham, still bent 
on "aggressive defence," sallied out to fight the 
enemy in the open — or rather on either flank. On 
the left front the Kifles and the 82nd, under Wal- 
poie, thrashed the enemy in a most satisfactory 
manner, capturing two i8-pounders. On the right, 
the 64th and the 34th, under Carthew, fought for 
hours with desperate courage. General Wilson, in 
particular, led two companies of the 64th in a very 
audacious attempt to capture a battery of the enemy. 
Wilson himself was killed, and two officers of the 
64th — Stirling and M'Crae — were each cut down 
in the act of spiking one of the enemy's guns, and 
the attempt, though gallant as anything recorded 
in the history of war, failed. 

When evening came the British had fallen back to 
their entrenchments, upon which a heavy fire, both of 
artillery and small arms, was poured. The enemy was 
in complete possession of the town, and, planting some 
guns on the bank of the river, tried to destroy the 
bridge. " The dust of no succouring columns," says 
Alison, " could be seen rising from the plains of Oude, 
and the sullen plunge of round shot into the river by 
the bridge showed by how frail a link they were bound 
to the opposite bank, whence only aid could arrive." 

Suddenly at this dramatic moment Campbell him- 
self — who had pushed ahead of his column — made 



2 52 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

his appearance with his staff on the scene. Says 
Alison : — 

The clatter of a few horsemen was suddenly heard 
passing over the bridge and ascending at a rapid pace the 
road which leads to the fort. As they came close under 
the ramparts, an old man with grey hair was seen to be 
riding at their head. One of the soldiers recognised the 
commander-in-chief ; the news spread like wildfire : the 
men, crowding upon the parapet, sent forth cheer after 
cheer. The enemy, surprised at the commotion, for a few 
moments ceased their fire. The old man rode in tlxrough 
the gate. All felt then that the crisis was over — that the 
Residency saved, would not now be balanced by Cawnpore 
lost. 

A characteristic incident marked Campbell's arrival. 
A guard of the 82nd held a hastily constructed Ute de 
pont which covered the bridge, and its officer, in 
answer to Campbell's inquiry as to how matters stood, 
replied with undiplomatic bluntness that " the garri- 
son was at its last gasp." At this announcement the 
too irascible Sir Colin simply exploded. " He flew at 
the wretched man," says Lord Roberts, "as he was 
sometimes apt to do when greatly put out, rating him 
soundly, and asking him ' how he dared to say of Her 
Majesty's troops that they were at the last gasp ! ' " 
This, in Campbell's ears, was mere egregious and in- 
credible treason ! 

"With the arrival of Campbell and his convoy, and 
the splendid little fighting force he commanded, the 
story of what happened at Cawnpore becomes very 



THE SEPOY IN THE OPEN 253 

pleasant reading. On the morning of the 30th, the 
further bank of the Ganges was white with the tents 
and black with the masses of Campbell's force. With 
what wrath Campbell's soldiers looked across the river 
and saw all their baggage ascending, in the shape of 
clouds of black smoke, to the sky may be guessed, 
but not described. Many wrathful camp expletives, 
no doubt, followed the upward curling smoke ! 

Peel's heavy guns were swung round, and opened in 
fierce duel with the enemy's battery firing on the 
bridge. One of the first shots fired from one of Peel's 
24-pounders struck the gun which Nana Sahib had at 
last got to bear upon the bridge, and dismounted it. 
An 8-inch shell next dropped amongst a crowd of his 
troops, and they quickly fell back. Then the British 
troops commenced to file across the river, still under 
the fire of the enemy. The enemy's advance batteries 
were quickly driven back, and the great convoy began 
to creep over the bridge. 

For thirty-six hours the long procession of sick and 
wounded, of women and children, of guns and baggage 
crept across the swaying bridge. On the night of 
the 29th, the mutineers tried to interrupt the process 
by sending down fire-rafts upon the bridge. Tried 
earlier, the scheme might have succeeded, or tried 
even then with greater skill and daring, it might have 
had some chance of success ; as it was, it failed ignobly, 
and the endless stream of non-combatants was brought 
over the river into safety. Campbell, for all his fire 



2 54 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

of courage — and it may be added of temper — had an 
ample measure of Scottish coolness, and he kept 
quietly within his lines for five days till his helpless 
convoy had been despatched under escort to Allaha- 
bad, and was beyond reach of hostile attack. Then, 
with his force in perfect fighting form, he addressed 
himself to the task of crushing the enemy opposed to 
him. 

His own force, steadily fed by reinforcements, by 
this time numbered 5000 infantry, 600 sailors, and 35 
guns ; that of the enemy amounted to something like 
2 5 ,000 men with 40 guns. Nana Sahib, with his mass 
of somewhat irregular troops, occupied the left wing 
between the city and the river; the Gwalior contin- 
gent, still formidable in numbers and military effi- 
ciency, occupied the town as a centre, and formed the 
enemy's right wing, thrust out into the plain toAvards 
the canal. It was a very strong position. The enemy's 
left, perched on high wooded hills, was covered with 
nullahs and scattered buildings. An attack on their 
centre could only be made through the narrow and 
crooked streets of the city, and was therefore almost 
impossible. But their right lay open to Campbell's 
stroke, and if turned it would be thrust off the Cal- 
pee road, its only line of retreat. 

Campbell's strategy was simple, yet skilful. Alison, 
indeed, says, somewhat absurdly, that it will "bear 
comparison with any of the masterpieces of Napoleon 
or Wellington." Kaye, too, says that the plan of this 



THE SEPOY IN THE OPEN 255 

battle " establishes the right of Sir Colin Campbell to 
be regarded as a great commander." Whether these 
somewhat high-flown eulogiums are justifiable may 
perhaps be doubted; but Campbell's plan certainly 
succeeded. Campbell, in brief, fixed the attention of 
the enemy on their left wing — the one he did not 
mean to attack — by opening on it on the morning of 
the 6th with the roar of artillery. He paralysed the 
centre with a feigned infantry assault, under Greathed. 
Then by a swift and unexpected attack he shattered 
the enemy's right wing, at once smiting it in front 
and turning its flank. 

The drifting clouds of battle-smoke helped him to 
concentrate, unobserved, on his left, a strong force 
consisting of Hope, with the Sikhs, the 53rd, the 
42nd, the 93rd, and Inglis with the 23rd, the 32nd, 
and 82nd. 

The iron hail of Campbell's guns smote the town 
cruelly, while the rattle of Greathed's musketry formed 
a sort of sharp treble to the hoarse diapason of the 
artillery. Presently, through the white drifting smoke 
of the guns, came the Rifles, under Walpole, firing on 
the edge of the town, to Greathed's left. Campbell 
was still keeping back his real stroke, and this clatter 
of artillery and musketry, and the clouds of drifting 
battle-smoke, held the senses of the enemy. Sud- 
denly, from behind a cluster of buildings on the British 
left, line after line of infantry moved quickly out. It 
was Hope's and Inglis's brigades, which, in parallel 



256 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

columns of companies, left in front, now — to quote the 
language of an eye-witness — " shot out and streamed 
on, wave after wave of glittering bayonets, till they 
stretched far across into the plain, while the cavalry 
and horse artillery, trotting rapidly out, pushed on 
beyond them, raising clouds of dust, and covering 
their advance." 

Campbell's plan was now developed, and the enemy 
opened all their guns with the utmost fury on the 
steady lines of the two brigades. At a given signal, 
the British columns swung round, formed front to the 
enemy's position, and, in perfect order, as Alison puts 
it, "swept on with a proud, majestic movement" 
against a cluster of high brick mounds which covered 
the bridge across the canal — both bridge and mounds 
being held in great force by the enemy. "Grouped 
in masses behind the mounds, the rebels fired sharply, 
while their guns, worked with great precision and 
energy, sent a storm of shot and shell upon the plain, 
over which, like a drifting storm, came the stout skir- 
mishers of the Sikhs and the 53rd, covering their 
front with the flashes of a bickering musketry, behind 
whom rolled in a long and serried line the 93rd and 
4211^1, sombre with their gloomy plumes and dark 
tartans, followed, some hundred yards in rear, by 
the thin ranks of Inglis's brigade." 

The skirmishers quickly cleared the mounds, 
and the Sikhs and the Highlanders went forward 
at a run to the bridge. It was held with fierce 



THE SEPOY IN THE OPEN 257 

courage by the enemy. A sleet of shot swept along 
its entire length. It seemed to be barred as by a 
thousand dancing points of fiame — the flash of mus- 
ketry and the red flames of the great guns. 

As Sikhs and Highlanders, however, pressed sternly 
forward, they heard behind them the tramp of many 
feet and the clatter of wheels. It was Peel with his 
sailors bringing up a 24-pounder. They came up at 
a run, the blue-jackets "tailing on" to the ropes, and 
clutching with eager hands the spokes of the wheels. 
The gun was swung round on the very bridge itself, 
and sent its grape hurtling into the ranks of the 
Sepoys on the further side. Sikhs and Highlanders 
kindled to flame at the sight of that daring act. 
With a shout they ran past the gun, and across 
the bridge ; some leaped into the canal, splashed 
through its waters and clambered up the further bank. 
The bridge was carried ! A battery of field artillery 
came up at the gallop, thundered across its shaking- 
planks, and, swinging round, opened fire on the tents 
of the Gwalior contingent, while the two brigades 
pressed eagerly forward on the broken enemy. 

Forbes-Mitchell, who fought that day in the ranki 
of the 93rd, gives a very picturesque description of the 
combat. Campbell, who was almost as fond of mak- 
ing speeches as Havelock, and understood perfectly 
how to stir the blood of his men, gave a brief address 
to the 93rd before launching the turning movement. 
He gave the Highlanders one somewhat quaint warn- 

R 



25 8 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY ] 

ing. There was a huge accumulation of rum, Camp-' • 

bell said, in the enemy's camp; it had been drugged, ' 

he added, by the enemy, and no man must touch it. ; 
" But, 93rd ! " he said, " I trust you ! Leave that rum 
alone ! " 

As a matter of fact, when the men swept with a : 

rush across the canal, they found the rum against ; 

which Sir Colin had warned them standing — great 1 

casks with their heads knocked out for the conveni- I 

I 

ence of intending drunkards — in front of the enemy's i 

camp, with their infantry draAvn up in columns behind ■ 

them. "There is no doubt," says Forbes-Mitchell, I 

"that the enemy expected the British would break | 

their ranks when they saw the rum, and make a 1 

rush for it, and they made careful and tempting provi- j 

sion for that contingency." That expectation forms a i 

somewhat severe commentary on the thirsty character \ 

the British private had won for himself in India ! 1 

The 93rd, however, virtuously marched past the I 

rum barrels, while the supernumerary rank, as ! 

Campbell had ordered, upset the barrels and poured j 

their contents out. It was, fortunately, not whisky ! ; 

Forbes - Mitchell, again, describes how, covered by 1 

the heavy fire of Peel's guns, their line advanced, j 

with the pipers playing and the colours in front .| 

of the centre company. " By the time," he says, t 

"we reached the canal, Peel's blue-jackets were call- j 

ing out, ' these cow-horses ' — meaning the gun 

bullocks. ' Come, you 93rd ! Give us a hand with ] 



THE SEPOY IN THE OPEN 259 

tlie drag-ropes as you did at Lucknow ; ' " and a 
company of the 93rd slung their rifles and dashed 
to the help of the blue-jackets ! The sailors gave 
a vehement cheer for " the red and blue," and some 
well-known vocalist in the ranks of the 93rd struck 
up a familiar camp-song with that title, and, says 
Forbes-Mitchell, " the whole line, including the skir- 
mishers of the 53rd and the sailors," joined with 
stentorian voices in singing — 

" Come, all yoix gallant British hearts, 
Who love the red and bine ! " 

The British line swept across the enemy's camp, 
and so complete was the surprise, so unexpected 
was the onslaught, that the chupatties were found 
in the very process of being cooked upon the fires, 
the bullocks stood tied behind the hackeries, the 
sick and wounded were lying in the hospitals. The 
smith left the forge and the surgeon his patient 
to fly from the avenging bayonets. Every tent 
was found exactly as its late occupants had sprung 
from it. 

Beyond the camp the Gwalior contingent had 
rallied, and stood drawn up in steady lines. The 
eagerly advancing British line — to the wonder of 
the men — was halted. Suddenly through some fields 
of tall sugar-cane the 9th Lancers came galloping, 
and behind them, masked by the close lines of the 
Lancers, was a field battery. When the enemy saw 
the gleaming tips of the British lances, they fell 



260 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

instantly into squares of brigades, and opened lire 
on the cavalry at a distance of about three hundred 
yards. " Just as they commenced to fire," says 
Forbes - Mitchell, " we could hear Sir Hope Grant, 
in a voice as loud as a trumpet, give the command 
to the cavalry, ' Squadrons outwards ! ' while Bour- 
chier gave the order to his gunners, ' Action front ! ' 
The cavalry wheeled as if they had been at a review 
on the Calcutta parade-ground, and thus uncovered 
the guns." The guns, charged with grape, were 
swung round, unlimbered as quick as lightning 
within about 250 yards of the squares, and round 
after round of grape was poured into the enemy 
with murderous effect, every charge going right 
through, leaving a lane of dead from four to five 
yards wide. The Highlanders could see the mounted 
officers of the enemy, as soon as they caught sight 
of the guns, dash out of the squares, and fly like 
lightning across the plain ! 

The victory, in a word, was complete. The Gwalior 
contingent was destroyed as a military force : its 
camp, magazines, and guns fell into the hands of 
the British, and Campbell urged a furious pursuit 
of the broken soldiery along the Calpee road. For 
fourteen miles the cavalry and horse artillery rode 
at the gallop, capturing ammunition waggons and 
baggage carts, dispersing and slaying such of the 
infantry as still tried to keep sorne formation, till 
at last the panting rebels flung away their arms, 



THE SEPOY IN THE OPEN 26 1 

and fled into the jungle, or crouched in the fields 
of sugar-cane, seeking cover from the red sabres 
and lances of the horsemen. The enemy's centre 
had no choice but to abandon the town, and fall 
hurriedly back and melt into the general stream 
of fugitives. 

Nana Sahib, with the left wing, had the Bithoor 
road, diverging widely from the Calpee road, for his 
line of retreat, and Campbell pushed forward a 
strong force under General Mansfield, his chief of 
staff", to thrust the flying enemy off" that road. 

Mansfield was a brave man, singularly expert in 
the routine work of a military office, but quite un- 
fitted for the rough shock of the battlefield. For 
one thing, he was very short-sighted, and, as Malle- 
son puts it, "was too proud to trust to the sight 
of others." He reached the point where he com- 
manded the road, but halted his men, stared with 
dim and spectacled eyes at the stream of fugitives, 
with their guns, and allowed it all to flow past him 
undisturbed and unpursued. Nana Sahib himself, 
as it happened, rode somewhere amongst the fugi- 
tives, unsmitten by British lead ! Campbell had 
to despatch Hope Grant the next day along the 
Bithoor road, in pursuit of this wing of the fugi- 
tives, and that fine soldier overtook the flying enemy 
after a march of twenty-five miles, captured all their 
guns, and tumbled them into hopeless ruin. 

Campbell's victory was splendid and memorable. 



262 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

With 5000 men lie had overthrown 25,000, captured 
thirty-two guns and the whole of their baggage, and 
driven his enemy in flying rout along two diverging 
lines of retreat. And it Avas a victory won rather 
by the brains of the general than by the bayonets 
of the soldiers. Campbell's entire loss in killed was 
only ninety-nine of all ranks. The army of 25,000 
Campbell overthrew so utterly, it must be remem- 
bered, included the best-trained and most perfectly- 
equipped native force in all India — the Gwalior 
contingent, at least 10,000 strong. 



CHAPTER X 

DELHI : HOW THE ETDGE WAS HELD 

ALL the passion, the tragedy, and the glory of 
'^ the Indian Mutiny gathers round three great 
sieges. We vaguely remember a hundred tales of 
individual adventure elsewhere on the great stage 
of the Mutiny; we have perhaps a still fainter and 
more ghostly mental image of the combats Havelock 
fought on the road to Lucknow, and the battles by 
which Campbell crushed this body of rebels or that. 
But it is all a mist of confused recollections, a 
kaleidoscope of fast-fading pictures. But who does 
not remember the three great sieges of the Mutiny — 
Cawnpore, Lucknow, Delhi? The very names arc 
like beacon lights flaming through leagues of night ! 

At Cawnpore the British were besieged and de- 
stroyed, a tragedy due to Wheeler's fatal blunder 
in choosing the site where the British were to make 
their stand for life, and his failure in collecting pro- 
visions for the siege. At Lucknow, again, the British 
were besieged, but triumphed, becoming themselves 
in turn the besiegers. Success here was due to the 
genius of Henry Lawrence in organising the defences 

of the Residency, and his energy in storing supplies 

263 



264 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

before the Mutiny broke out. The brave men who 
died behind Wheeler's ridges of earth, or in the 
Slaughter Ghaut at Cawnpore, showed valour as lofty 
and enduring as that of the men who held the Resi- 
dency with such invincible courage at Lucknow. But 
the interval between the tragedy at CaAvnpore and the 
triumph at Lucknow is measured by the difference 
between the two leaders, Wheeler and Lawrence. 
Both were brave men, but Lawrence was a great 
captain. 

At Delhi the British, from the outset, were the 
besiegers, and nothing in British history — not the 
story of Sir Richard Grenville and the Revenge, 
of the Fusileers at Albuera, or of the Guards at 
Inkeri-ian — is a more kindling tale of endurance 
and valour than the story of how for months a 
handful of British clung to the Ridge outside Delhi, 
fighting daily with foes ten times more numerous 
than themselves, and yet besieging — or maintaining 
the show of besieging — the great city which was the 
nerve-centre and heart of the whole Mutiny, 

At Cawnpore and Lucknow the British fought 
for existence. At Delhi they fought for empire ! 
While the British flag flew from the Ridge at Delhi 
it was a symbol that the British raj was still 
undestroyed. It was a red gleaming menace of 
punishment to all rebels. Had that flag fallen for 
twenty-four hours, India, for a time at least, would 
have been lost to England. But it flew proudly and 




LORD LAWRENCE 



Reproduced ff-oin the Life of Lord Laivrence by ferinission of 
R. BoswoKTH Smith, Esq. 



DELHI: HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD 265 

threateningly aloft, undestroyed by a hundred attacks, 
till at last Nicholson led his stormers through the 
Cashmere Gate, and the fate of the Mutiny was 
sealed ! 

The mutineers from Meerut rode into Delhi on 
May II. It was the city of the Great Mogul. It 
appealed by a thousand memories to both the race- 
pride and the fanaticism of the revolted Sepoys. 
Here the Mutiny found, not only a natural strong- 
hold, but an official head, and Delhi thus became a 
far-seen signal of revolt to the whole of Northern 
India. But on June 7 — or less than four weeks 
after Willoughby in heroic despair blew up the 
great magazine at Delhi — Sir Henry Barnard's 
microscopic army made its appearance on the 
Ridge, and the siege of Delhi began. It was a real 
stroke of military genius that thus, from the earliest 
outbreak of the Mutiny, kept a bayonet, so to speak, 
pointed threateningly at its very heart ! 

And the hero of the siege of Delhi is not Barnard, 
or Wilson, or Baird-Smith, or Neville Chamberlain, 
or Nicholson — but a man who never fired a shot or 
struck a sword-stroke in the actual siege itself — 
John Lawrence. Lawrence, and not Havelock, nor 
Outram, nor Canning, was the true saviour of the 
British raj in India in the wild days of the Mutiny. 

John Lawrence was five years younger than his 
gallant brother Henry, who died in the Residency at 
Lucknow. He had no visible gleam of the brilliancy 



266 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

which makes Henry Lawrence a character so attrac- 
tive. Up to middle Hfe, indeed, John Lawrence was 
a silent, inarticulate, rugged man, with the reputa- 
tion of being a great worker, but whom nobody 
suspected to be a genius, and for whom nobody — 
least of all Lawrence himself — dreamed fame Avas 
waiting. He came of that strong-bodied, strong- 
brained, masterful race of which the North of 
Ireland is the cradle. But England, Ireland, and 
Scotland all had a share in the making of John 
Lawrence. He was actually born in England. His 
father was a gallant Irish soldier, who led the forlorn 
hope at the storming of Seringapatam. His mother 
was a lineal descendant of John Knox, the Scottish 
reformer. And perhaps the characteristic traits of 
the three countries never met more happily in a 
single human character than in John Lawrence. In 
Ulster he was known amongst his schoolmates as 
"English John." At Haileybury, in England, he 
was looked upon as a typical Irishman. 

The truth is, he was Englishman, Irishman, 
Scotchman all in one. He had Celtic glow and fire 
under a crust of Scottish silence and caution ; and he 
added the Englishman's steady intelligence and pas- 
sion for justice to Scottish hard-headedness and the 
generous daring of the Irish character. Or, to put 
the matter in a different way, in any perilous crisis 
he could survey the situation with the balanced 
judgment of an Englishman; could choose his course 



DELPII : HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD 267 

with the shrewd and calculating sagacity of a Scotch- 
man ; then carry it out with Irish fire and daring ! 

Lawrence shone as a youth neither in studies nor 
in games, and both as a youth and man he had a mag- 
nificent faculty for silence. By blood and genius 
he was a soldier. But duty was the supreme law of 
life for him ; and at the bidding of what he deemed 
to be duty, he surrendered a soldier's career and 
entered the Indian Civil Service. His silent energy, 
his strong brain, his passion for work, his chivalrous 
loyalty to righteousness, quickly assured him a great 
career. He was above the middle height, strongly 
built, with an eager, forward gait. His massive head 
gave him a sort of kingly look — the forehead broad, 
the eyes deep-set and grey, but with a gleam in them 
as of a sword-blade. The firm lips had a saddened 
curve ; the face was ploughed deep with furrows 
of thought and work. His voice, when his feelings 
were aroused, had a singular resonance and timbre, 
and his whole aspect was that of silent, half-melan- 
choly simplicity and strength. 

But Lawrence was exactly the man for a great 
crisis. He had a kingly faculty for choosing fit in- 
struments. He saw with perfect clearness every 
detail of the visible landscape ; but he had also that 
subtler vision — which only great poets and great 
statesmen possess — of the tendencies and forces 
which underlie external facts and determine their 
flow. The Celtic element in him, perhaps, gave 



268 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

Lawrence tliat rare and subtle faculty ; but by virtue 
of his Scottish strain he was essentially a man of 
action. He could grasp a great purpose with a hand 
of steel, and hold it unshaken through all the shocks 
of conflict and adversity. 

Lawrence, it may be added, was pre-eminently 
fortunate in his officers. Partly by the attraction 
which draws like to like, and partly by his own rare 
genius for choosing fit instruments, he had gathered 
round him a group of splendid soldiers and adminis- 
trators, all in the prime of life. Nicholson, for ex- 
ample, was only thirty-five; Edwardes and Neville 
Chamberlain only thirty-seven. The general average 
of age, indeed, on Lawrence's staff was much below 
that of India in general. All the energy of youth, in 
brief, was in Lawrence's men ; all the sagacity of 
ripest statesmanship was in Lawrence himself. 

Lawrence's contribution to the history of the 
Mutiny must be compressed into a dozen sentences. 
In 1857 he was Chief Commissioner of the Punjaub, 
the "land of the five rivers," with a population of 
20,000,000. The Punjaub was newly-conquered terri- 
tory ; its population was the most warlike in India ; 
its frontiers marched for 800 miles with those of 
Afghanistan, and the hill passes were held by wild 
Moslem clans always ready to storm down with clatter- 
ing shield and gleaming spear on the fat, defenceless 
plains at their feet. In eight years, under the reghne 
of the Lawrences, the Punjaub was rendered orderly, 



DELHI: HOW THE RTDGE WAS HELD 269 

loyal, and prosperous; while the Punjaub Frontier 
Force, a body of 12,000 men, which kept the mountain 
tribes in order, was perhaps the first body of native 
troops which ever followed British officers into battle. 

Then came the cataclysm of the Mutiny. As with 
the shock of an earthquake, British rule in Northern 
India seemed to crumble to the ground, and British 
officers who yesterday were rulers of kingdoms and 
cities, were to-day fugitives, or fighting in tiny and 
broken clusters for their lives. The Mutiny, too, cut 
Oude and the Punjaub off from the centre of autho- 
rity at Calcutta. For weeks no whisper from the 
outside world reached Lawrence. He was left to 
keep his own head and shape his own policy. 

His policy may be told almost in a sentence. He 
anticipated mutiny, and outpaced it. He disarmed 
with iron resolution and swift decision all the Sepoy 
regiments whose loyalty was doubtful, and put all 
the forts, arsenals, treasuries, and strategic points in 
the Punjaub under the guard of British bayonets. 
Then he organised a movable column of European 
troops— scanty in dimensions, but of the finest fight- 
ing quality — under the command, first, of Neville 
Chamberlain, and next of Nicholson ; and this force 
stood ready to strike at any point where mutiny 
threatened to lift its head. In the Punjaub, that is, 
mutiny was anticipated, robbed of weapons and left 
helpless, and under the ceaseless menace of the light- 
footed, almost ubiquitous, movable column. 



270 THE TALE OF THE GKEAT MUTINY 

Next, having dismissed into air, as with a gesture 
of his hand, the army whose loyalty was tainted, 
Lawrence had to create another native army, with 
loyalty above reproach. And from the wild moun- 
tain clans and the Sikhs — themselves a conquered 
people — Lawrence actually created a new army, nearly 
50,000 strong, with which he was able to crush the 
very Sepoys who, under British leadership, had been 
the conquerors of the Punjaub ! 

Lawrence's genius and masterful will, too, deter- 
mined the whole strategy to be employed for the sup- 
pression of the Mutiny. He settled the question that 
Delhi must be instantly besieged. He formed a mili- 
tary base for the siege at Umballa, a distance of a 
hundred miles, and he kept sleepless guard over that 
long line of communications. He fed the besieging 
force with supplies and munitions of every kind; 
reinforced it with, first, his own frontier troops, the 
famous Guides and the Ghoorkas, and, later, with his 
own movable column. He cast into the scale against 
Delhi, in effect, his last coin, his last cartridge, and 
his last man. And in that terrible game, on which 
hunsf the fate of the British rule in India, Lawrence 
won ! " Through him," wrote Lord Canning, " Delhi 
fell." And the fall of Delhi rang the knell of the 
Mutiny. 

Once, it is true, even John Lawrence's iron courage 
seemed to give way, or, rather, the strain of the peril 
threw his cool judgment off its balance. The fate of 




MAJOR-GENERAL SIR HERBERT B. EDWARDES, 
K.C.B., K. C.S.I. 



From a lithograph 



DELHI: HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD 27 1 

India visibly liung on Delhi. The force on the Ridge 
was absurdly inadequate for its task, and Lawrence 
conceived the idea that, to succeed at Delhi, it would 
be necessary to abandon Peshawur, give up the Pun- 
jaub to Dost Mohammed, and retire across the Indus. 
There were three European regiments, with powerful 
artillery, and the best native troops locked up beyond 
the Indus. On the Ridge at Delhi they would decide 
the issue of the siege. " If Delhi does not fall," Law- 
rence argued, " Peshawur must go. Let us abandon 
the Punjaub for the sake of Delhi." 

It is still thrilling to read the sentences in which 
Herbert Edwardes protested against this evil policy. 
To abandon Peshawur, he urged, would be to fail not 
only at Delhi, but all over India. "Cabul would 
come again ! " Lawrence quoted Napoleon against 
Edwardes. Did not Napoleon ruin himself in 18 14 
by holding fast to the line of the Elbe instead of fall- 
ing back to the Rhine ? But Edwardes knew the 
Eastern mind. India is not Europe. To waver, to 
seem to withdraw, to consent to disaster, was to bo 
ruined. To abandon the Punjaub, Edwardes warned 
Lawrence, was to abandon the cause of England in 
the East. " Every hand in India would be against us. 
Don't yield an inch of frontier ! ... If General Reed, 
with all the men you have sent him, cannot get into 
Delhi, let Delhi go. The Empire's reconquest hangs 
on the Punj aub." Then he quotes Nelson against Law- 
rence. " Make a stand ! ' Anchor, Hardy, anchor ! ' " 



2/2 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

The quotation was, perhaps, not very relevant ; but it 
is curious to note how one brave spirit seems to speak 
to another across half a century, and give a new edge 
to its courage. 

There can be no doubt that Edwardes showed, at 
this moment, not only the more heroic temper, but 
the sounder judgment of the two. Canning settled 
the dispute. " Hold on to Peshawur to the last," he 
wrote ; and the question was decided. But Lawrence's 
momentary lapse into indecision only sets in more 
dazzling light his courage afterwards. It was after 
he had seriously meditated abandoning the Punjaub 
that he despatched the immortal movable column, 
under Nicholson, 4200 strong, with a powerful batter- 
ing-train, to Delhi, thus feeding the gallant force on 
the Ridge with his own best troops, and yet not giving 
up " an inch of the frontier," or abating one whit of 
his own haughty rule in the Punjaub ! 

General Anson, as we have seen, was commander- 
in-chief in India when the Mutiny broke out. He was 
a brave man, had fought as an ensign at Waterloo, 
and had seen forty-three years' bloodless service 
after that great battle. But his gifts were rather 
social than soldierly. He was a better authority on 
whist and horses than on questions of tactics and 
strategy, and he was scarcely the man to face an army 
in revolt. Lawrence acted as a military brain and 
conscience for Anson, and determined that Delhi 
must be attacked ; though, as a matter of fact, Anson 



DELHI: HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD 273 

had only three regiments of British troops, almost no 
artillery, and absolutely no transport at his command. 

On May 16 Anson held a council of war with his 
five senior officers at Umballa, and the council 
agreed unanimously that, with the means at Anson's 
command, nothing could be done. It is a curious 
fact, showing the speed with which, from this point, 
events moved, that, within less than two months 
from the date of that council, all its members were 
dead — either killed in battle, or killed by mere 
exposure and strain ! But Lawrence's views pre- 
vailed. " Pray, only reflect on the whole history of 
India," he wrote to Anson. " Where have we failed 
when we have acted vigorously ? Where have we 
succeeded when guided by timid counsels ? " 

Anson and his advisers gave that highest proof 
of courage which brave men can offer : they moved 
forward without a murmur on an adventure which 
they believed to be hopeless. From an orthodox 
military point of view it was hopeless. Only, the 
British empire in India has been built up by the 
doing of " hopeless " things. 

On May 24 Anson reached Kurnal, where his 
troops were to arrive four days afterwards. On 
the 26th Anson himself was dead, killed by cholera 
after only four hours' illness ! 

Sir Henry Barnard, who succeeded him, had been 
Chief of the Staff in the Crimea. He was an utter 
stranger to India, having landed in it only a few 

S 



2 74 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

weeks before. He was a brave soldier, and a higb- 
minded English gentleman; but be was, perbaps, 
even less of a general tban Anson. His force 
consisted of 2400 infantry, 600 cavalry, and 22 
field-guns. Barnard bad to fight one fierce and 
bloody combat before be reached the Delhi Ridge. 
This took place on June 7. It was the first time the 
British and the mutineers had met in the shock 
of battle ; and the Sepoys who had revolted at 
Meerut, and the British troops who had been so 
strangely held back from crushing the revolt at 
the moment of its outbreak, now looked grimly at 
each other across a narrow interval of sun-baked 
turf. Lord Roberts says that v/hen, as night fell 
on June 6, it was known that the troops were to 
move forward and attack the rebel force which 
stood in their path to Delhi, the sick in hospital 
declared they would remain there no longer, and 
"many quite unfit to walk insisted upon accom- 
panying the attacking column, imploring their com- 
rades not to mention they were ill, for fear they 
should not be allowed to take part in the fight ! " 

The rebels fought with an obstinacy unsurpassed 
in the whole record of the Mutiny; but British 
troops in such a mood as we have described, were 
not to be stayed. The 75th carried the rebel guns 
at the point of the bayonet ; Hope Grant with his 
scanty squadrons of horse swept round their left 
flank. The British lost less than 200 killed and 




Walker&CockerellbC 



2/6 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

wounded, the rebels lost over looo men and 13 
guns ; and, as night fell, Barnard took possession 
of the famous Ridge. Then from the streets of 
the revolted city, the crowds looked up and saw 
the British flag, a gleaming and fluttering menace, 
a stern prophecy of defeat and retribution, flying, 
from the Flagstafi' Tower. 

Delhi lies on the right bank of the Jumna ; and 
nearly six miles of massive stone wall twenty-four 
feet high, with a ditch twenty-five feet broad and 
nearly as many feet deep in front, sweep round the 
city, forming a bow, of which the river is the string. 
Napier, afterwards Lord Napier of Magdala, had em- 
ployed his rare skill as an engineer in strengthen- 
ing the defences of the city. The walls were knotted 
with bastions, mounting 114 heavy guns. Behind 
them was a huge fanatical population and over 
40,000 revolted Sepoys, with some 60 field-guns 
and exhaustless magazines of warlike supplies. 
Every week, from one revolted station after an- 
other, new waves of mutineers flowed into the 
city. Some 3000 British soldiers, with a few bat- 
talions of native troops, and 22 light guns, stood 
perched on the Ridge to undertake the desperate 
feat of besieging this huge stronghold ! 

The historic Ridge, it may be explained, is a low 
hill, not quite sixty feet high, and some two miles 
long, running obliquely towards the city walls. Its 
left touches the Jumna itself, at a distance of more 



DELHI: HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD 2/7 

than two miles from the city ; its right was within 
1 200 yards of the hostile walls. At the middle of 
the Ridge stood the Flagstaff Tower. On its right 
extremity the Ridge overlooked the trunk road, 
and was surrounded by a fringe of houses and 
gardens, making it the weak point of the British 
position. The various buildings along the crest of 
the Ridge, Hindu Rao's house, the observatory, an 
old Pathan mosque, the Flagstaff Tower, &c., were 
held by strong pickets, each with one or more 
field-guns. The external slope of the Ridge was 
covered with old buildings and enclosures, giving 
the enemy dangerous shelter in their attacks. The 
main body of the British was encamped on the 
reverse slope of the Ridge, 

Delhi, it will be seen, was in no sense " invested." 
Supplies and reinforcements flowed in with perfect 
safety on its river front throughout the whole siege. 
All that Barnard and his men could do was to keep 
the British flag flying on the Ridge, and hold their 
ground with obstinate, unquenchable courage, against 
almost daily assaults, until reinforcements reached 
them, and they could leap on the city. 

The first reinforcement to arrive took the sur- 
prising shape of a baby ! One officer alone, Tytler, 
of the 38th Native Infantry, had brought his wife 
into the camp ; she was too ill to be sent to the 
rear, and, in a rough waggon for bed-chamber, gave 
birth to a son, who was solemnly named " Stanley 



278 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

Delhi Force." The soldiers welcomed the infant 
with an odd mixture of humour and superstition. 
A British private was overheard to say, " Now we 
shall get our reinforcements. This camp was formed 
to avenge the blood of innocents, and the first re- 
inforcement sent us is a new-born infant ! " 

The next day the famous Guides sent by Lawrence 
from his Frontier Force marched into camp, three 
troops of cavalry and six companies of infantry, 
under Daly, an officer of great daring and energy. 
This little force had marched 580 miles in twenty 
days, a feat of endurance unsurpassed in Indian 
history. The cavalry consisted mainly of Afghans, 
tall, swarthy, fierce-looking. The Ghoorkas were 
sturdy, undersized little Highlanders, born fighters 
all of them, and ready to follow their commanding 
officer. Major Reid, on any dare-devil feat to which 
he might lead them. The battalion numbered 490 
men, and of these no less than 320 — or three out 
of four — were killed or wounded during the siege. 
On the day of the assault (September 14) no fewer 
than 180 of them, who were lying sick or wounded 
in the hospital, volunteered for the assault, and 
came limping and bandaged into the ranks of their 
comrades, to join in the mad rush through the 
Cashmere Gate ! 

The revolted Sepoys, on their side, were full of a 
fierce energy quite unusual to them, and on the very 
first day they flung themselves in great numbers. 



DELHI: HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD 279 

and with great daring, on the detachment holding 
Hindu Rao's house. Two companies of the 60th 
held this post, with two guns from Scott's battery; 
and for half the afternoon the quick flashes, the 
white smoke of cannon, and the incessant rattle of 
musketry round the assailed post told with what 
fury the attack was being urged, and how stubbornly 
the defence was being maintained. 

At last the cavalry of the newly-arrived Guides 
was sent at the enemy. They rode in upon the 
Sepoys with magnificent courage, broke them into 
flying fragments, and pursued them, wounding and 
slaying, to the Avails of the city. Their victory was 
brilliant, but it was dearly bought, their commander, 
Quentin Battye, being mortally wounded. He was 
little more than a lad, but was almost worshipped by 
his dark-faced horsemen. He had been an English 
public-school boy, and. Lord Roberts says, was 
curiously fond of quotations. Almost his last words, 
spoken to a friend, were, " Good-bye ! ' Dulce et 
decorum est pro patria mori.' That's how it is 
with me, old fellow ! " The victories of England 
are still won, as in Wellington's days, on the playing 
grounds of its great schools. 

The Guides found in the camp a soldier of mingled 
yet splendid fame who had been their leader in 
many a gallant charge — Hodson, of Hodson's Horse. 
Hodson had been, rightly or wrongly, under a cloud ; 
but the crisis of the Mutiny naturally gave, to the 



2 8o THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

most daring horseman and the most brilHant hght 
cavalry leader in India, a great opportunity. He 
was now at the head of a body of irregular horse, 
and one of Barnard's most trusted officers. He was 
tall, fair-haired, with bloodless complexion, heavy 
curved moustache, and keen, alert, and what some 
one called " unforgiving " eyes. 

When the Guides, as they rode into the camp, 
met Hodson, a curious scene took place. They 
crowded round him with wild gesticulations and 
deep-voiced, guttural shouts. " They seized my 
bridle," says Hodson himself, "my dress, hands, 
and feet, and literally threw themselves down before 
the horse with tears streaming down their faces!" 
Hodson was the ideal leader for fierce irregulars like 
the Guides, a brilliant swordsman, of iron nerve, and 
courage as steadfast as the blade of his own sword. 
And with leaders like Daly, and Hodson, and Reid, 
and Battye, Sikhs and Ghoorkas made soldiers that 
might have charged through Russian Life Guards, 
or broken a square of Pomeranian Grenadiers ! 

On June lo the Sepoys delivered another attack, 
in great strength, on Hindu Rao's house, which they 
looked upon as the key of the British position, and 
which was held on this day by the Ghoorkas under 
Reid. The Sepoys hoped that the Ghoorkas would 
join them, and, as they came on, instead of firing, 
they waved their hands, and shouted, " Don't fire. 
We are not firing. We want to speak to you. 



DELHI: HOW THE EIDGE WAS HELD 28 1 

Come and join us." " Oh yes ! we are coming," 
answered the sturdy Httle Ghoorkas, with fierce, 
jesting humour, and, running forward to within 
thirty yards of the Sepoys, they poured a quick 
and deadly fire upon them, driving them back with 
great slaughter. From that stage of the siege, 
Hindu Rao's house, perhaps the most fiercely 
attacked point in the British front, was held by 
Reid and his Ghoorkas, and a better officer or 
better men were not to be found on the Ridge. 

The more eager spirits among the British were 
burning to leap on the city, and, on June 1 2, a plan 
of attack was actually prepared by the engineer officers 
and Hodson, and approved by Barnard. The Avhole 
force was to be divided into three columns ; one was 
to break its way through the Cashmere Gate, a second 
through the Lahore Gate, a third was to fling itself on 
the walls, and attempt an escalade — practically, the 
same plan by which the city was finally carried. It 
was a project, considering the force available for its 
execution, almost insane in its daring ; and Barnard, 
though he consented to it, took no decided and 
methodical steps to carry it out. 

It would almost seem, indeed, as if physical strain, 
want of sleep, and the terrible responsibility he was 
carrying, had affected Barnard's head. The situation 
might well have taxed — and over-taxed — the brain of 
a greater general than Barnard. The light guns of 
the British, firing at a distance of a thousand yards, 



282 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

could make no impression on the walls. Their 
strength was dwindling daily ; that of the enemy was 
growing fast. And it was natural that the British 
temper, under such conditions, should become explo- 
sive, and that the more daring spirits were eager, in 
the face of any risks, to come to the sword's point with 
their enemies. The General's nerve was curiously 
shaken. Hope Grant tells how Sir Henry Barnard 
sent for him on the evening of the 12th : " He hushed 
me into a whisper, and asked me if I thought any 
person could possibly overhear us, adding, ' There is 
treason around us.' Then he explained, ' I mean to 
attack the town to-night.'" Barnard's manner pro- 
duced on Hope Grant's mind the impression that his 
brain was slightly off its balance. 

At one o'clock that night the troops were suddenly 
paraded, ammunition served out, and leaders assigned 
to the three columns. But the 75 th Foot had, some- 
how, been left at the extreme front without orders, 
and before they could be brought up the grey dawn 
was breaking, and the proposed attack had to be aban- 
doned. Lord Roberts says that this " blunder " was 
"a merciful dispensation, which saved the British 
from an irreparable disaster." That was not Hodson's 
judgment. In his journal he says : " The attack was 
frustrated by the fears and absolute disobedience to 

orders of , the man who first lost Delhi, and has 

now, by his folly, prevented its being recaptured." But 
Hodson was more impatient and blunt-spoken than is 



DELHI: HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD 283 

permissible to even a gallant soldier, and his diary 
reflects, perhaps, rather the condition of his liver 
than the deliberate judgment of his head. Thus he 

writes : " That old woman , has come here for 

nothing apparently, but as an obstacle ; is also 

a crying evil to us ! " 

On the 12th, indeed, the Sepoys themselves were 
attacking Flagstaff Tower with great fury, but were 
repelled with steady valour. On June 14, General 
Reed arrived in camp ; he was in chief divisional com- 
mand, and should at once have taken over the charge 
of the siege from Barnard ; but a ride of 500 miles had 
left him little better than a physical wreck, and Bar- 
nard still remained in command. 

On the 13 th, 14th, and 15 th there were new attacks 
pluckily urged by the Sepoys, and repelled with cool 
and stern courage by the British. " They came on," 
is Hodson's summary, "very boldly, and got most 
heartily thrashed." On the 17th the British Avere 
attacked along their whole front, and from almost 
every direction, and an attempt was made to con- 
struct a battery which would enfilade the Ridge. 
Two small columns, under Tombs and Reid, were 
sent out with a dash, broke up the proposed battery 
in brilliant style, and drove the troops that covered 
it in wild and bloody flight to the city walls. 

Week after week the fighting went on most gallantly, 
and the story gleams with records of shining pluck ; 
it rings with the clash of steel on steel ; it thrills to 



284 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

the rattle of musketry volleys and the deeper voice of 
the cannon. Thus Hope Grant tells how, on the night 
of the 1 9th, from sunset till half-past eleven, he kept 
back, by repeated charges of squadrons of the 9th 
Lancers and the Guides, with the help of some field- 
guns, an attack on the rear of the British position. 

The fighting was close and furious. As Daly came 
up through the darkness into the fight. Tombs said, 
" Daly, if you don't charge, my guns are taken ; " and 
Daly, shaking his reins, and followed by a handful of 
his Guides, dashed on the enemy, and saved the guns. 
Colonel Yule, of the 9th Lancers, was killed; Daly 
himself was severely wounded ; and the enemy, in the 
dark, worked round the flanks of the British guns, 
and two of the pieces were on the point of being taken. 

Hope Grant collected a few men, and rode fiercely 
into the enemy's ranks. His horse was shot, and, 
galloping wildly into the mass of Sepoys, fell dead. 
Hope Grant was thus left unhorsed in the darkness, 
and in the midst of the enemy ! His orderly, a fine, 
tall Sowar, who had remained loyal when his regi- 
ment mutinied, was in a moment by his side, and 
cried, " Take my horse ; it is your only chance of 
safety." Hope Grant refused the generous offer, 
and, taking a firm grasp of the horse's tail, bade the 
Sowar drag him out of the ineUe. The next day 
Hope Grant sent for the Sowar, warmly praised his 
gallant conduct, and offered him a reward in money. 
The brave fellow drew himself up with dignity, 



DELHI: HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD 285 

salaamed, and said, " No, Sahib, I will take no 
money." 

Seaton describes how, during that wild night com- 
bat, they watched, from the Ridge above, the flashes 
of the guns, rending the gloom Avith darting points 
of flame, and listened to the shouts, the clash of 
weapons, the crackle of the musketry that marked 
the progress of the fight. Presently there came a 
sudden glare, then a roar that for a moment drowned 
all other sounds. One of the British limbers had 
blown up. The fight was going badly. Then, out 
of the darkness, came the cry of a human voice, 
" Where is the General ? " It was an officer asking 
reinforcements, and three companies of the ist 
Fusileers, who were standing hard by, silent and 
invisible in the dusk, were sent down to the fight. 
They moved forward at the curt word of com- 
mand : presently the rolling crash of their volleys 
was heard; a line of red, dancing points of fire 
through the darkness marked their progress, and 
the guns were saved ! 

June 23 was the centenary of Plassey, and a pre- 
diction, widely spread amongst the Sepoys, announced 
that on that day the raj of the British was to end. 
As it happened, that particular day was also a great 
religious festival for the Hindus, whilst it was the 
day of the new moon, and so was held by Moham- 
medans as a fortunate day. Accordingly an attack 
of great fury, and maintained for eight long hours. 



286 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

was made on the British right. Some reinforce- 
ments, amounting to 850 men, were on the 22nd 
within twenty miles of Delhi, and a staff officer was 
despatched to hurry them on ; and they actually 
reached the Eidge in time to take part in the final 
effort which drove back the enemy. Roberts says. 
that " no men could have fought better than did the 
Sepoys. They charged the Rifles, the Guides, and 
the Ghoorkas again and again." But nothing could 
shake the cool and obstinate — the almost scornful — 
valour of the British. 

Every available man in the camp was at the front, 
and when the 2nd Fusileers and the 4th Sikhs, who 
formed the approaching reinforcement, came press- 
ing on with eager speed to the crest of the Ridge, 
over which the battle-smoke was drifting in dense 
white clouds, they were at once sent into the fight, 
and the enemy was finally driven back with a loss 
of over 1600 men. It is not easy to picture the 
exhaustion of the British at the close of a fight so 
stern and prolonged. " When I arrived at Hindu 
Rao's," wrote an eye-witness, " I found every one ex- 
hausted. There were the ist Fusileers and some 
Rifles all done up. I went on to the new advanced 
battery ; it was crowded with worn-out men. The 
artillerymen, likewise done up, had ceased firing ; 
another party of Rifles in a similar state in another 
position. 120 men of the 2nd Fusileers, who had 
marched twenty-three miles that morning and had 



DELHI: HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD 287 

had no breakfast, were lying down exhausted. Three 
weak companies of Ghoorkas were out as skirmishers; 
but they, too, were exhausted, and the remainder were 
resting under a rock. The heat was terrific, and the 
thermometer must have been at least 140 degrees, 
with a hot wind blowing, and a frightful glare." Of 
ten officers in the 2nd Fusileers five were struck 
down by coup de soleil. 

The next day Neville Chamberlain, Lawrence's 
favourite officer, rode into the camp, and assumed 
the post of adjutant-general. 

On July 3 Baird Smith reached the Ridge, and 
took charge of the engineering operations of the 
siege. On July 5 Sir Henry Barnard died, killed 
by the burden of a task too great for him, and Reed 
assumed command. He held it for less than ten 
days, and then passed it over to Archdale Wilson, 
who had shared in the discredit of Meerut, and who, 
though a brave man, had scanty gifts of leadership. 

Twice over during those days of fierce and pro- 
longed battle a time had been fixed for assaulting 
the city, and twice the plan had been spoiled by an 
earlier counter-attack of the enemy. Baird Smith, 
on his arrival, approved of the scheme for an assault, 
and urged it on Reed, who hesitated over it during 
the brief period of his command, and then handed 
it over as a perplexing legacy to his successor Wilson. 
The proposal to leap on Delhi was finally abandoned; 
but Baird Smith, the coolest brain employed in the 



288 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

siege, recorded long afterwards his deliberate judg- 
ment that " if we had assaulted any time between 
the 4th and 14th of July we should have carried the 
place," 

On July 9, an attack of great strength, and marked 
by great daring, was made by the enemy, and was 
almost lifted into success by the disloyalty of a 
detachment of the 9th Irregular Cavalry. They 
were on outpost duty, watching the trunk road. 
They allowed the enemy to approach the British 
position without giving warning, and when Hills, 
who commanded two guns in front of the General's 
mound, ran out of his tent and leaped on his horse, 
he found a troop of Carabineers in broken flight, 
sweeping past him, and the enemy almost on his 
guns. He shouted " Action front ! " then, to give 
his gunners a chance of firing, rode single-handed 
into the enemy's squadrons, a solitary swordsman 
charging a regiment ! 

Hills actually cut down the leading man, and 
wounded the second; then two troopers charging 
him at once, he was rolled over, man and horse, 
and the troops swept over him. Hills struggled, 
bruised and half-dazed, to his feet, picked up his 
sword, and was at once attacked by two of the 
rebel cavalry and a foot soldier. Hills coolly shot 
the first horseman riding down upon him, then 
catching the lance of the second in his left hand, 
thrust him through the body with his sword. He 



DELHI: HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD 289 

was instantly attacked by the third enemy, and 
his sword wrenched from him. Hills, on this, fell 
back upon first principles, and struck his opponent 
in the face repeatedly with his fist. But he was 
by this time himself exhausted, and fell. Then, 
exactly as his antagonist lifted his sword to slay 
him. Tombs, who had cut his way through the 
enemy, and was coming up at a gallop to help 
his comrade, with a clever pistol-shot from a dis- 
tance of thirty paces killed the Sepoy. It was a 
Homeric combat, and both Tombs and Hills re- 
ceived the Victoria Cross. 

The enemy meanwhile had galloped past the guns, 
eager to reach the native artillery, which they hoped 
would ride off with them. The 9th Lancers, how- 
ever, had turned out in their shirt-sleeves, and they, 
riding fiercely home, drove off the enemy. 

It is always interesting to listen to the story of 
a gallant deed, as told by the doer himself. The 
reckless valour which Lieutenant Hills showed in 
charging, single-handed, a column of rebel cavalry, 
in order to secure for his gunners a chance of 
opening fire, can hardly be described by a remote 
historian. But Hills has told the story of his own 
deed, and an extract from his tale, at least, is worth 
giving :— 

I thought that by charging them I might make a com- 
motion, and give the gun time to load, so in I went at the 
front rank, cut down the first fellow, slashed the next 

T 



290 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

across the face as hard as I could, when two Sowars 
charged me. Both their horses crashed into mine at the 
same moment, and, of course, both horse and myself were 
sent flying. We went down at such a pace that I escaped 
the cuts made at me, one of them giving my jacket an 
awful slice just below the left arm — it only, however, cut 
the jacket. Well, I lay quite snug until all had passed 
over me, and then got up and looked about for my sword. 
I found it full ten yards off. I had hardly got hold of it 
when three fellows returned, two on horseback. The first 
I wounded, and dropped him from his horse. The second 
charged me with a lance. I put it aside, and caught him 
an awful gash on the head and face. I thought I had 
killed him. Apparently he must have clung to his horse, 
for he disappeared. The wounded man then came up, but 
got his skull split. Then came on the third man — a 
young, active fellow. I found myself getting very weak 
from want of breath, the fall from my horse having 
piimped me considerably, and my cloak, somehow or other, 
had got tightly fixed round my throat, and was actually 
choking me. I went, however, at the fellow and cut him 
on the shoulder, but some "kupra" (cloth) on it appa- 
rently turned the blow. He managed to seize the hilt of 
my sword, and twisted it out of my hand, and then we 
had a hand-to-hand fight, I punching his head with my 
fists, and he trying to cut me, but I was too close to him. 
Somehow or other I fell, and then Avas the time, fortu- 
nately for me, that Tombs came up and shot the fellow. 
I was so choked by my cloak that move I could not until 
I got it loosened. By-the-bye, I forgot to say that I fired 
at this chap twice, but the pistol snapped, and I was so 
enraged I drove it at the fellow's head, missing him, 
however. 



DELHI: HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD 29 1 

The Sepoys had planted a battery of guns at a 
point in their front called Ludlow Castle, and main- 
tained from it a constant fire on Metcalfe House. 
Their skirmishers, too, crept up with great auda- 
city, and maintained a ceaseless fire on the British 
pickets. It was necessary to silence this battery, 
and early in the morning of August 12, without 
call of bugle or roll of drum, a force of British, 
Sikhs, and Ghoorkas, with a handful of cavalry, 
stole down the slope of the Ridge in order to 
carry the offending guns. The order was given for 
profoundest silence, and almost like a procession 
of shadows the little column crept over the Ridge 
through the gloom, and disappeared in the midst 
of the low-lying ground on its way to the rebel 
guns. 

Undetected in the sheltering blackness, the column 
reached the sleeping battery. A startled Sepoy, who 
caught through the haze and shadow a sudden 
glimpse of stern faces and the gleam of bayonets, 
gave a hasty challenge. It was answered by a volley 
which ran like a streak of jagged flame through 
the darkness, and with a rush the British — their 
officers gallantly leading, and Sikh and Ghoorka 
trying to outrace their English comrades — swept 
on to the battery. The Sepoys succeeded in dis- 
charging two guns on their assailants ; but Lord 
Roberts records that the discharge of the third 
gun was prevented by a gallant Irish soldier named 



292 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

Reegan. He leaped with levelled bayonet over tlie 
eartliwork, and charged the artilleryman, who was 
in the very act of thrusting his port-fire on to the 
powder in the touch-hole of the gun. Reegan was 
struck at on every side, but nothing stopped him, 
and the fierce lunge of his bayonet slew the artil- 
leryman and prevented the discharge of the gun. 
Captain Greville, followed by two or three men, 
flung himself on another gun, and slew or drove 
off its gunners. 

Hodson characteristically says, "It was a very 
comfortable little affair ! " As a matter of fact, it 
was, for a dozen fierce minutes, a deadly hand- 
to-hand combat. " The rebel artillerymen," says 
Roberts, " stood to their guns splendidly, and fought 
till they were all killed." The rebels, too, were in 
great force, and as the passionate onelee swayed to 
and fro, and the muskets crackled fiercely, and angry 
thrust of bayonet was answered by desperate stroke 
of tulwar, the slaughter was great. Some 250 Sepoys 
were slain, while the British only lost one officer and 
nineteen men, though nearly a hundred more were 
wounded. But the battery was destroyed, and four 
guns brought back in triumph to the camp. 

The return of the force was a scene of mad excite- 
ment. A wounded officer sat astride one gun, waving 
his hand in triumph. A soldier, with musket and 
bayonet fixed, bestrode each horse, and dozens of 
shouting infantrymen — many with wounds and torn 



DELHI : HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD 293 

uniform, and all with smoke-blackoned faces — clung, 
madly cheering, to the captured pieces. 

On August 7 there rode into the British camp 
perhaps the most famous and daring soldier in all 
India, the man with whose memory the siege* of 
Delhi, and the great assault which ended the siege, 
are for ever associated — John Nicholson. 

Nicholson was of Irish birth, the son of a Dublin 
physician, who had seen twenty years' service in 
India — service brilliant and varied beyond even what 
is common in that field of great deeds. There is no 
space here to tell the story of Nicholson's career, but 
as he rode into the British camp that August morn- 
ing, he was beyond all question the most picturesque 
and striking figure in India. He was a man of splen- 
did physique, and is said to have borne an almost be- 
wildering resemblance to the Czar Nicholas. He was 
six feet two in height, strongly built, with a flowing 
dark-coloured beard, colourless face, grey eyes, with 
dark pupils, in whose depths, when he was aroused, 
a point of steady light, as of steel or of flame, would 
kindle. Few men, indeed, could sustain the piercing 
look of those lustrous, menacing eyes. His voice had 
a curious depth in it ; his whole bearing a singular 
air of command and strength — an impression which 
his habit of rare and curt speech intensified. " He 
was a man," says one who knew him well, " cast in a 
giant mould, with massive chest and powerful limbs, 
and an expression, ardent and commanding, with a 



2 94 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

dash of roughness ; features of stern beauty, a long 
black beard, and sonorous voice. His imperial air 
never left him," "Nicholson," says Lord Roberts, 
" impressed me more profoundly than any man I had 
ever met before, or have ever met since." 

Nicholson, like the Lawrences, like Havelock, and 
Herbert Edwardes, and many of the Indian heroes of 
that generation, was a man of rough but sincere 
piety, and this did not weaken his soldiership — it 
rather gave a new loftiness to its ideals and a steadier 
pulse to its courage. " If there is a desperate deed 
to be done in India," Herbert Edv/ardes told Lord 
Canning, "John Nicholson is the man to do it" ; and 
exactly that impression and conviction Nicholson 
kindled in everybody about him. 

"He had," says Mrs. Steel, "the great gift. He 
could put his own heart into a whole camp, and 
make it believe it was its own." Such a masterful 
will and personality as that of Nicholson took abso- 
lutely captive the imagination of the wild, irregular 
soldiery of which he was the leader. 

What was Nicholson's fighting quality, indeed, may 
be judged, say, from the fashion in which he smashed 
up the mutinous Sepoys at Mardan (as told in 
Trotter's " Life " of him), and chased them mile after 
mile towards the hills of Swat, Nicholson leading the 
pursuit on his huge grey charger, " his great sword 
felling a Sepoy at every stroke ! " His faculty for 
strategy, and for swift, sustained movement is, again, 



DELHI: HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD 295 

told by the manner in which ho intercepted and de- 
stroyed the Sealkote mutineers at the fords of the 
Ravi on their way to Delhi. The mutineers were 
two days' march ahead of him, and Nicholson made a 
forced march of forty-four miles in a single day, and 
under a July sun in India, to get within stroke of 
them. Nicholson's little force started at 9 p.m. on 
July 10, and marched twenty-six miles without a 
break ; after a halt of two hours they started on their 
second stage of eighteen miles at 10 a.m. During 
the hottest hour of the afternoon the force camped 
in a grove of trees, and the men fell, exhausted, into 
instant slumber. 

Presently an officer, awakening, looked round for 
his general. " He saw Nicholson," says Trotter, " in 
the middle of the hot, dusty road, sitting bolt upright 
on his horse in the full glare of that July sun, waiting 
like a sentinel turned to stone for the moment when 
his men should resume their march ! " They might 
take shelter from the heat, but he scorned it. A 
march so swift and fierce was followed by an attack 
equally vehement, Nicholson leading the rush on the 
enemy's guns in person, and with his own sword 
cutting literally in two a rebel gunner in the very act of 
putting his linstock to the touch-hole of his cannon. 

The worship of force is natural to the Eastern 
mind ; and, in 1 848, when Nicholson was scouring the 
country between the Attock and the Jhelum, making 
incredible marches, and shattering with almost in- 



296 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

credible valour whole armies with a mere handful of 
troops, the mingled admiration and dread of the native 
mind rose to the pieties of a religion. " To this day," 
a border chief told Younghusband, twelve years after 
Nicholson was dead, "our women at night wake 
trembling, and saying they hear the tramp of Nikal- 
sain's war-horse ! " A brotherhood of Fakirs renounced 
all other creeds, and devoted themselves to the wor- 
ship of " Nikkul-Seyn." They would lie in wait for 
Nicholson, and fall at his feet with votive offerings. 

Nicholson tried to cure their inconvenient piety by 
a vigorous application of the whip, and flogged them 
soundly on every opportunity. But this, to the Fakir 
mind, supplied only another proof of the great Irish- 
man's divinity ; and, to quote Herbert Edwardes, " the 
sect of Nikkul-Seynees remained as devoted as -ever. 
Sanguis raartyrum est semen Ecclesice ! On one oc- 
casion, after a satisfactory whipping, Nicholson re- 
leased his devotees on the condition that they would 
transfer their adoration to John Becher ; but as soon 
as they attained their freedom they resumed their 
worship of the relentless Nikkul-Seyn." The last of 
the sect, says Raikes, dug his own grave, and was 
found dead in it shortly after the news came that 
Nicholson had fallen at Delhi. 

Nicholson's ardour had made him outride the mov- 
able column he was bringing up to reinforce the 
besiegers; but on August 14, with drums beating 
and flags flying, and welcomed with cheers by the 



DELHI: HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD 297 

whole camp, that gallant little force marched in. It 
consisted of the 52nd, 680 strong, a wing of the 6ist, 
the second Punjaub Infantry, with some Beloochees 
and military police, and a field battery. 

Work for such a force, and under such a leader, was 
quickly found. The siege train intended to breach 
the walls of Delhi was slowly creeping along the road 
from the Punjaub, and with unusual daring a great 
force of mutineers marched from Delhi to intercept 
this convoy. The movement was detected, and on 
August 25 Nicholson, with 1600 infantry, 400 cavalry, 
and a battery of field guns, set out to cut off the 
Sepoy force. 

The rain fell in ceaseless, wind-blown sheets, as only 
Indian rain can fall. The country to be crossed was 
mottled with swamps. The roads were mere threads 
of liquid mud, and the march was of incredible difii- 
culty. The enemy was overtaken at Nujutgurh, after 
a sort of wading march which lasted twelve hours. 
" No other man in India," wrote a good soldier after- 
wards, " would have taken that column to Nujutgurh. 
An artillery officer told me that at one time the water 
was over his horses' backs, and he thought they could 
not possibly get out of their difiiculties. But he 
looked ahead, and saw Nicholson's great form riding 
steadily on as if nothing was the matter." 

The rebels, 6000 strong, held an almost unassailable 
position, edged round Avith swamps and crossed in 
front by a deep and swift stream with an unknown 



298 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

ford. In the dusk, however, Nicholson led his troops 
across the stream. As they came splashing up from 
its waters he halted them, and, with his deep, far- 
reaching voice, told them to withhold their fire till 
within thirty yards of the enemy. He then led 
them steadily on, at a foot-pace, over a low hill, and 
through yet another swamp, while the fire of the 
enemy grew ever fiercer. 

When within twenty yards of the enemy's guns, 
Nicholson gave the word to charge. A swift volley, 
and an almost swifter rush, followed. The British in 
a moment were over the enemy's guns, Nicholson still 
leading, his gleaming sword, as it rose and fell in des- 
perate strokes, by this time turned bloody red. Gab- 
bett, of the 6ist, ran straight at one of the guns, and 
his men, though eagerly following, could not keep 
pace with their light-footed officer. He had just 
reached the gun, fully twenty paces in advance of his 
men, when his foot slipped, he fell, and was instantly 
bayoneted by a gigantic Sepoy. With a furious 
shout — a blast of wrathful passion — his panting 
men came up, carried the gun, and bayoneted the 
gunners. 

Nicholson had the true genius of a commander. 
The moment he had carried the guns he swung to 
the left ; and led his men in a rush for a bridge across 
the canal in the enemy's rear, which formed their 
only line of retreat to Delhi. An Indian force is 
always peculiarly sensitive to a stroke at its line of 




BRIGADIER -GENERAL JOHN NICHOLSON 
From a port7'ait in the East India United Sei'vice Club 



DELHI: HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD 299 

retreat, and the moment Nicholson's strategy was 
understood the Sepoy army resolved itself into a 
flying mob, eager only to outrun the British in the 
race for the bridge. Nicholson captured thirteen 
guns, killed or wounded 800 of the enemy, and drove 
the rest, a mob of terrified fugitives, to Delhi, his 
own casualties amounting to sixty. 

His men had outmarched their supplies, and they 
had at once to retrace their steps to Delhi. They 
had marched thirty-five miles, under furious rains 
and across muddy roads, and had beaten a force three 
times stronger than their own, holding an almost im- 
pregnable position, and had done it all in less than 
forty hours, during twenty-four of which they had 
been without food. It was a great feat, and as the 
footsore, mud-splashed soldiers came limping into 
the camp all the regimental bands on the Ridge 
turned out to play them in. 

The few hours preceding Nicholson's arrival at the 
Ridge were the darkest hours of the siege, and some 
at least of the British leaders were hesitating whether 
the attempt to carry the city ought not to be aban- 
doned. The circumstances, indeed, were such as 
might well strain human fortitude to the breaking 
point. The British force of all arms, native and 
European, was under 6000. Its scanty and light 
artillery commanded only two out of the seven gates 
of Delhi. The siege, in fact, was, as one writer puts 
it, " a struggle between a mere handful of men on an 



300 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

open ridge and a host behind massive and well- 
fortified walls." Cholera was raging among the 
British. The 52nd on August 14 marched into camp 
680 strong with only six sick. On September 14 — 
only four weeks later, that is — the effectives of the 
regiment were only 240 of all ranks. Nearly two 
men out of every three had gone down ! 

There was treachery, too, in Wilson's scanty force. 
Their plans were betrayed to the enemy. The 
slaughter amongst the British officers in the native 
regiments was such as could only be explained by 
the fact that they were shot down by their own men 
from behind, rather than by their open foes in the 
front. The one good service General Reed did 
during his brief interval of command was to dismiss 
from the camp some suspected regiments. 

Archdale Wilson's nerve, like that of Barnard 
and of Reed, his predecessors, was shaken by the 
terrific strain of the siege, and he contemplated 
abandoning it. " Wilson's head is going," wrote 
Nicholson to Lawrence on September 7 ; "he says 
so himself, and it is quite evident he speaks the 
truth." It was due chiefly to John Lawrence's 
clear judgment and iron strength of will that a 
step so evil and perilous was not taken. Law- 
rence had flung his last coin, his last cartridge, his 
last man into the siege, and he warned Wilson 
that the whole fate of the British in India de- 
pended on an immediate assault. " Every day," he 



DELHI: HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD 30I 

wrote, "disaffection and mutiny spread. Every day 
adds to the danger of the native princes taking part 
against us." The loyalty of the Sil^hs themselves 
was strained to the breaking point. Had the British 
flag fallen back from the Ridge, not merely would 
Delhi have poured out its armed host, 50,000 strong 
but every village in the north-west would have risen, 
and the tragedy of the Khyber Pass might have been 
repeated, on a vaster scale, upon the plains of Hin- 
dustan. The banks of the Jumna might have seen 
such a spectacle as Cabul once witnessed. 

But there were brave men on the Ridge itself, 
trained in Lawrence's school, and in whom the spirit 
of John Lawrence burned with clear and steady 
flame. Baird Smith and Neville Chamberlain, 
Norman and Nicholson, and many another, knew 
that the fortunes and honour of England hung on 
the capture of Delhi. Lord Roberts tells a curious 
and wild story that shows what was Nicholson's 
temper at this crisis : — 

I was sitting in Nicholson's tent before he set out to 
attend the council. He had been talking to me in confi- 
dential terms of personal matters, and ended by telling me 
of his intention to take a very unusual step should the 
council fail to arrive at any fixed determination regarding 
the assault. "Delhi must be taken," he said, "and it is 
absolutely essential that this should be done at once ; and, 
if Wilson hesitates longer, I intend to propose at to-day's 
meeting that he should be superseded." I was greatly 
startled, and ventured to remark that, as Chamberlain was 



302 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

liors de covihat from his wound, Wilson's removal would 
leave him (jSTicholson) senior officer with the force. He 
smiled as he answered, " I have not overlooked that fact. 
I shall make it perfectly clear that, under the circum- 
stances, I could not possibly accept the command myself, 
and I shall propose that it be given to Campbell of the 
52nd. I am prepared to serve under him for the time 
being, so no one can ever accuse me of being influenced 
by personal motives." 

Roberts puts on record his "confident belief" 
that Nicholson would have carried out this daring 
scheme, and he adds that, in his deliberate judg- 
ment, Nicholson was right. Discipline in a crisis 
so stern counts for less than the public honour and 
the national safety. 

It is to be noted that on a still earlier date, 
September 1 1 — Nicholson had written to Lawrence 
telling him Wilson was talking of withdrawing the 
guns and giving up the siege. " Had Wilson carried 
out his threat of withdrawing the guns," adds 
Nicholson, " I was quite prepared to appeal to the 
army to set him aside, and elect a successor. I have 
seen lots of useless generals in my day ; but such an 
ignorant, croaking obstructive as he is, I have never 
hitherto met with ! " 

Fortunately, Wilson found a tonic in the spirit of 
the men who sat round his council-table. "The 
force," he wrote to the Chief Commissioner, "will 
die at their post." Reinforcements came creeping 
in, till the forces on the Ridge rose to 8748 men, of 



DELHI: HOW THE RIDGE WAS HELD 303 

wliom, however, less than half were British. The 
battering-train from Umballa, too, safely reached 
the camp. It consisted of six 24-pounders, eight 
i8-pounders, and four 8-inch howitzers, with 1000 
rounds of ammunition per piece. The huge convoy, 
with its tumbrils and ammunition-carts, sprawled 
over thirteen miles of road, and formed an amaz- 
ing evidence of the energy and resources of John 
Lawrence. 

Now at last the siege really began. Ground was 
broken for the new batteries on September 7, at a 
distance of 700 yards from the walls, and each 
battery, as it was armed, broke into wrathful thunder 
on the city. Each succeeding battery, too, was 
pushed up closer to the enemy's defences. Thus 
Major Scott's battery was pushed up to within 180 
yards of the wall, and the heavy guns to arm it had 
to be dragged up under angry blasts of musketry fire. 
No fewer than thirty-nine men in this single battery 
were struck down during the first night of its con- 
struction ! A section of No. i Battery took fire 
under the constant flash of its own guns, and, as 
the dancing flames rose up from it, the enemy 
turned on the burning spot every gun that could 
be brought to bear. The only way to quench the 
fire was to take sand-bags to the top of the battery, 
cut them open, and smother the fire with streams 
of sand. 

A Ghoorka officer named Lockhart called for 



304 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

volunteers, and leaped upon the top of the battery, 
exposed, without shelter, to a storm of cannon balls 
and musket bullets. Half-a-dozen Ghoorkas in- 
stantly followed him. Four out of the seven men — 
including Lockhart himself — were shot down, but 
the fire was quenched. 

The fire of the batteries was maintained with 
amazing energy and daring until September 13. 
Colonel Brind, for example, records that he never 
took off his clothes or left his guns from the mo- 
ment they opened on the 8 th to the 14th inst. 



CHAPTER XI 

DELHI : THE LEAP ON THE CITY 

ON September 13 four engineer officers — Medley 
and Lang, Greathed and Home — undertook 
the perilous task of examining the breaches in the 
enemy's defences. Medley and Lang were detailed 
to examine the Cashmere Bastion, and Lang asked 
to be allowed to go while it was yet daylight. 
Leave was granted ; and, with an escort of four 
men of the 60th, he crept to the edge of the cover 
on the British front, then coolly ran up the glacis 
and sat down upon the top of the counterscarp, 
under a heavy fire, studying the ditch and the two 
breaches beyond, and returned unhurt, to pronounce 
the breach practicable ! It was necessary, however, 
to ascertain the depth of the ditch, and Lang and 
Medley were sent again, after nightfall, on this 
business. 

Medley himself may tell the story of the daring 
adventure : — 

It was a bright, starlight night, with no moon, and the 
roar of the batteries, and clear, abrupt reports of the 
shells from the mortars, alone broke the stillness of the 
scene ; while the flashes of the rockets, carcasses, and fire- 

305 u 



306 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

balls lighting up the air ever and anon made a really 
beautiful spectacle. The ghurees struck ten, and, as pre- 
concerted, the fire of the batteries suddenly ceased. Our 
party was in readiness. We drew swords, felt that our 
revolvers were ready to hand, and, leaving the shelter of 
the picquet, such as it was, advanced stealthily into the 
enemy's country. . . . With the six men who were to 
accompany us, Lang and I emerged into the open, and 
pushed straight for the breach. In five minutes we found 
ourselves on the edge of the ditch, the dark mass of the 
Cashmere Bastion immediately on the other side^ and the 
breach distinctly discernible. Not a soul was in sight. 
The counterscarp was sixteen feet deep, and steep. Lang 
slid down first, I passed down the ladder, and, taking two 
men out of the six, descended after him, leaving the other 
four on the cope to cover our I'etreat. 

Two minutes more and we should have been at the top 
of the breach. But, quiet as we had been, the enemy 
were on the watch, and we heard several men running 
from the left towards the breach. We therefore re- 
ascended, though with some diificulty, and, throwing our- 
selves down on the grass, waited in silence for what was 
to happen. A number of figures immediately appeared on 
the top of the breach, their forms clearly discernible 
against the bright sk}^ and not twenty yards distant. 
We, however, were in the deep shade, and they could 
not, apparently, see us. They conversed in a low tone, 
and presently we heard the ring of their steel ramrods 
as they loaded. We waited quietly, hoping that they 
would go away, when another attempt might be made. 
Meanwhile, we could see that the breach was a good one, 
the slope being easy of ascent, and that there were no 
guns on the flank. We knew by experience, too, that 



DELHI : THE LEAP ON THE CITY 307 

the ditch was easy of descent. After waiting, therefore, 
some minutes longer, I gave the signal. The whole of 
us jumped up at once and ran back towards our own 
ground. Directly we were discovered a volley was sent 
after us. The balls came whizzing about our ears, but no 
one was touched. 

The other engineers performed their task with 
equal coolness and daring, and at midnight all the 
breaches were reported practicable, and it was 
resolved that the assault should be made in the 
morning. 

Nicholson, at the head of a column of 1000 men — 
of whom 300 belonged to the 75th — was to carry 
the breach near the Cashmere Bastion. The second 
column, under Brigadier Jones, composed of the 8th 
the 2nd Bengal Fusileers, and the 4th Sikhs — 850 
in all — was to assail the gap near the Water Bastion. 
The third column, 950 strong, under Campbell, of 
the 52nd, was to blow in the Cashmere Gate and 
fight its way into the city. The fourth column, 
under Major Reid, made up of the Guides' Infantry, 
Ghoorkas, and men from the picquets, was to break 
in an entrance by the Lahore Gate. A reserve 
column, 1000 strong, under Brigadier Longfield, 
of the 8th, was to feed the attack at any point 
where help was required. Five thousand men were 
thus to fling themselves on a great city held by 
50,000 ! 

It was three o'clock in the morning, the stars 



308 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

still burning in tlie measureless depths of the Indian 
sky, when the columns stood in grim silence ready 
for the assault. The chaplain of the forces records 
that in not a few of the tents the service for 
the day was read before the men went out into 
the darkness to join the columns. The lesson for 
the day, as it happened, was Nahum iii., and the 
opening verse runs, " Woe to the bloody city ! It 
is full of lies and robbery. . . . Behold, I am against 
thee, saith the Lord of Hosts." 

How do men feel who gather at such an hour 
and for such a deed ? Lord Roberts quotes from 
a brother officer's diary a curious little picture of 
British soldiers preparing themselves for one of the 
most daring exploits in the history of war :— 

We each of us looked carefully to the reloading of our 
pistols, filling of flasks and getting as good protection as 
possible for our heads, which would be exposed so much 
going up the ladders. I wound two puggaries or tm'bans 
round my old forage cap, with the last letter from the 
hills in the top, and committed myself to the care of 
Providence. There was not much sleep that night in our 
camp. I dropped off now and then, but never for long, 
and whenever I woke I could see that there was a light in 
more than one of the ofiicers' tents, and talking was going 
on in a low tone amongst the men, the snapping of a lock 
or the springing of a ramrod sounding far in the still air, 
telling of preparation for the coming strife. A little after 
midnight we fell in as quickly as possible, and by the light 
of a lantern the orders for the assault were then read to 
the men. Any officer or man who might be wounded was 



DELHI : THE LEAP ON THE CITY 309 

to be left where he fell ; no one was to step from the 
ranks to help him, as there were no men to spare. If the 
assault were successful he would be taken away in the 
doolies, or litters, and carried to the rear, or wherever 
he could best receive medical assistance. If we failed, 
wounded and sound should be prepared to bear the worst. 
No prisoners were to be made, as we had no one to guard 
them, and care was to be taken that no women or children 
were injured. To this the men answered at once by " No 
fe^r, sir." The officers now pledged their honour, on their 
swords, to abide by these orders, and the men then pro- 
mised to follow their example. 

At this moment, just as the regiment was about to 
march off. Father Bertrand came up in his vestments, 
and, addressing the Colonel, begged for permission to 
bless the regiment, saying, " We may differ, some of us, 
in matters of religion, but the blessing of an old man and 
a clergyman can do nothing but good." The colonel at 
once assented, and Father Bertrand, lifting his hands to 
heaven, blessed the regiment in a most impressive manner, 
offering up at the same time a prayer for our success, and 
for mercy on the souls of those soon to die. 

The dash on the city was to have taken place at 
three o'clock in the morning, but it was difficult to 
collect all the men from the picquets who were to 
take part in the assault, and day was breaking before 
the columns were complete. The engineers, closely 
examining the breaches, found that during the night 
the Sepoys had blocked up the gaps with sandbags 
and had improvised chevmix de frise. The attack 
was accordingly held back for a few minutes while 



310 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

the British batteries re-opened for the purpose of 
smashing the new defences. 

The sun was clear of the horizon when, at a signal, 
the batteries ceased. A sudden silence fell on the 
slope of the Ridge and on the enemy's wall. A 
thrill ran through the waiting columns, as each man, 
like a hound on the leash, braced himself up for the 
desperate rush. Nicholson had been standing, silent 
and alone, in front of his column ; and now with a 
gesture of his hand he gave the signal. A shout, 
sudden, and stern, and fierce, broke through the air. 
It came from the 6oth Rifles, who with a vehement 
cheer ran out to the front in skirmishing order, and 
in a moment the four columns were in swift and 
orderly movement. Then the enemy's guns from 
every point broke into flame ! 

It is impossible to compress into a few paragraphs 
of cold type the story of that great assault ; the fire 
and passion of the charge, the stubborn fury of the 
defence, the long, mad struggle through the streets. 
And the fact that four desperate combats at as many 
separate points broke out at once makes it still more 
difiicult to give any single connected picture of the 
scene. 

Nicholson led column No. i steadily forward till it 
reached the edge of the jungle. Then the engineers 
and storming party went forward at a run. They 
reached the crest of the glacis, and stood there under 
a perfect blaze of musketry. The stormers had out- 



DELHI : THE LEAP ON THE CITY 3 I I 

run the ladder parties ! The ditch gaped sixteen 
feet wide below them. The breach in front was 
crowded with dark figures, shouting, firing, hurling 
stones, all in a tempest of Eastern fury. The 
ladders were quickly up, and were dropped into the 
ditch. The men leaped down, and almost with the 
same impulse swept up the further side — Nicholson's 
tall figure leading — and men and ofiicers, contending' 
madly with each other who should be first, raced up 
the broken slope of the breach, dashed the Sepoys 
back in confused flight, and gained the city ! 

The second column was as gallantly led as the 
first, and met with an almost fiercer resistance. At 
the signal its storming party ran out from the 
shelter of the Customs house. The two engineer 
officers, Greathed and Ovenden, and twenty-nine 
men out of the thirty-nine who formed the ladder 
parties were instantly shot down ; but the attack 
never paused for an instant. The men of the 8th, the 
Sikhs, and the Fusileers came on with a silent speed 
and fury that nothing could stop. The ditch was 
crossed, as with a single effort. One officer — little 
more than a lad — Ensign Phillips, with soldierly 
quickness, and with the help of a few riflemen, 
swung round the guns on the Water Bastion, and 
opened fire with them on the Sepoys themselves. 

The assault of the third column, directed at the 
Cashmere Gate, is, perhaps, the most picturesque 
and well-known incident in the wild story of that 



312 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

morning. This column did not find a breach ; one 
had to be made ! Campbell brought up his column 
within sight of the Cashmere Gate, but under cover ; 
then, at the signal, a little cluster of soldiers ran out 
towards the gate. Its first section consisted of 
Home, of the Engineers, with two sergeants and 
ten sappers, each man carrying a bag containing 
twenty-five pounds of gunpowder. Behind them 
ran a firing party of the 52nd, under Salkeld. The 
sight of that little, daring handful of men, charging 
straight for the gate, so amazed the Sepoys that 
for a few moments they stared at them without 
firing. Then, from the wall on either side of the 
gate, from above the gate itself, and from an open 
wicket in its broad expanse, broke a sustained and 
angry blaze of musketry ! 

To run steadily on in the teeth of such a fire was 
a feat of amazing courage. But, Home leading, the 
little cluster of heroes never faltered. The bridge in 
front of the gate had been almost completely de- 
stroyed, a single beam being stretched across the ditch; 
and, in single file, each man carrying his bag of 
powder, Home's party — by this time reduced to nearly 
one-half of its number — crossed, flung down the bags 
of powder at the foot of the gate, and then leaped into 
the ditch for cover, leaving the firing party behind to 
make the explosion. 

Salkeld came up at a run, carrying the port-fire in 
his hand, his men, with bent heads, racing beside him. 



DELHI : THE LEAP ON THE CITY 3 I 3 

Salkeld fell, shot through the leg and arm ; but, like 
the runner in Greek games, he handed the port-fire as 
he fell to Corporal Burgess, who in turn, as he bent 
over the powder, was shot dead. Lord Roberts says 
that in falling he yet ignited the powder. Malleson, 
on the other hand, says that Sergeant Carmichael 
snatched the port-fire from the dying hand of Bur- 
gess, lit the fuse, and then, in his turn, fell mortally 
wounded. On this another brave fellow named 
Smith, thinking Carmichael had failed, ran forward 
to seize the port-fire, but saw the fuse burning, and 
leaped into the ditch, just in time to escape the 
explosion. 

In a moment there was a blast as of thunder, and 
— not the gate unfortunately, but merely the little 
wicket in it, had vanished ! The bugler from the 
ditch sounded the advance ; but such was the tumult 
of battle now raging that the storming parties of the 
52nd, waiting eagerly to make their rush, heard 
neither the explosion nor the bugle-call. Campbell, 
their colonel, however, had seen the flame of the ex- 
plosion, and gave the word. The storming party and 
the supports, all intermixed, ran forward at the double, 
they crossed, man after man, the single beam remain- 
ing of the bridge, and crept through the wicket. 
They found within the gate an overturned cannon, 
and some blackened Sepoy corpses. The main body 
followed, and from the two breaches and the Cash- 
mere Gate the three columns met, breathless, con- 



314 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

fused, but triumphant, in the open space between the 
Cashmere Gate and the church. 

The fourth cokimn alone of the assaulting parties 
practically failed. A battle is always rich in blunders ; 
and the guns, which were to have accompanied the 
column, somehow failed to arrive, and Reid, its com- 
mander, pushed on without them. He had to face 
an unbroken wall i8 feet high, lined with guns and 
marksmen. Reid himself fell, wounded and insen- 
sible, and there was some confusion as to who should 
take his place as leader. It was expected that the 
Lahore Gate would have been opened from within 
by the advance of the first column, but," before the 
Lahore Gate was reached from within the city by 
the British, the fourth column found itself unable 
to sustain the murderous fire from the walls, and fell 
back into cover. 

The Sepoys, in their exultation, actually ventured 
upon a sally, and Hope Grant had to bring up the 
scanty cavalry of the camp to check the advance of 
the enemy. 

The cavalry could not charge, for this would bring 
them under the fire of the walls; they would not 
withdraw, for this would uncover the camp. They 
could only sit grimly in their saddles, and hold back 
the enemy by the menace of their presence, while men 
and horses went down unceasingly under the sleet of 
fire which broke over them. "For more than two 
hours," says Hodson, " we had to sit on our horses, 



DELHI : THE LEAP ON THE CITY 3 I 5 

under tlie heaviest fire, without the chance of doing 
anything. My young regiment behaved admirably, 
as did all hands. The slaughter was great. Lamb's 
troop lost twenty-seven men out of forty-eight, and 
nineteen horses, and the whole cavalry suffered in 
the same proportion." 

Hope Grant tells how he praised the 9th Lancers 
for their cool steadiness, and the men answered from 
the ranks that they were ready to stand as long as he 
chose. " Hodson," says one officer who was present, 
" sat like a man carved in stone, apparently as uncon- 
cerned as the sentries at the Horse Guards, and only 
by his eyes and his ready hand, whenever occasion 
offered, could you have told that he was in deadly 
peril, and the balls flying among us as thick as hail ! " 

Delhi in shape roughly resembles an egg, and, 
in the assault we have described, the British had 
cracked, so to speak, the small end. Inside the 
Cashmere Gate was a comparatively clear space, 
a church, a Hindoo temple, and a mosque being 
scattered along its southern boundary. These owed 
their existence to the somewhat mixed piety of James 
Skinner, a gallant soldier, who played a brilliant part 
in Olive's wars. His mother was a Hindoo lady, 
his wife was a Mohammedan; and, being severely 
wounded in some engagement, Skinner vowed, if he 
recovered, he would build three places of worship — a 
church, a temple, and a mosque ! And the three 
buildings which stand opposite the Cashmere Gate 



3l6 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

are the fruits of that very composite act of piety. 
The three assaulting columns, in broken order and 
sadly reduced in numbers, but in resolute fighting 
mood, were re-formed in the open space in front of 
these buildings. 

The third column, under Colonel Campbell, cleared 
the buildings on its left front, and then pushed for- 
ward on its perilous way straight through the 
centre of the city towards the Jumma Musjid, a 
huge mosque that lifted its great roof high above 
the streets and gardens of the city more than two 
miles distant. The first and second columns, now 
practically forming one, swung to the right, and, 
following the curve of the " egg " to which we com- 
pared Delhi, proceeded to clear what was called the 
Rampart Road, a narrow lane running immediately 
within the wall round the whole city. It was in- 
tended to push along this lane till the Lahore Gate 
was reached and seized. The Lahore Gate is the 
principal entrance into the city, the main street — 
the Chandin Chouk, the Silver Bazaar — runs from 
it to the King's Palace, bisecting the " egg " which 
forms the city. If this gate were carried, Delhi 
was practically in the British possession. 

The column, led by Jones, pushed eagerly on. 
The Moree Gate and the Cabul Gate were seized, 
the guns on the ramparts were captured, and the 
leading files of the advance came in sight of the 
Lahore Gate. A lane, a little more than two hun- 



DELHI : THE LEAP ON THE CITY 3 1 7 

dred and fifty yards long, led to it ; but that narrow, 
crooked path was " a valley of death " more cruel 
and bloody than that down which Cardigan's Light 
Cavalry rode in the famous charge at Balaclava. 
The city wall itself formed the boundary of the 
lane on the right; the left was formed by a mass 
of houses, with flat roofs and parapets, crowded with 
riflemen. The lane was scarcely ten yards wide 
at its broadest part ; in places it was narrowed to 
three feet by the projecting buttresses of the wall. 

About a hundred and fifty yards up the lane was 
planted a brass gun, sheltered by a bullet-proof 
screen. At the further extremity of the lane, where 
the ground rose, was a second gun, placed so as to 
cover the first, and itself covered by a bullet-proof 
screen. Then, like a massive wall, crossing the 
head of the lane, rose the great Burn Bastion, heavily 
armed, and capable of holding a thousand men. A 
force of some 8000 men, too, had just poured into 
the city through the Lahore and Ajmeer Gates, 
returning from the sally they had made on Reid's 
column ; and these swarmed round the side and 
head of the lane to hold it against the British, 

Never, perhaps, did soldiers undertake a more 
desperate feat than that of fighting a way through 
this " gate of hell," held by Sepoys, it will be noted, 
full of triumph, owing to their repulse of the attack of 
the fourth column under Reid already described. But 
never was a desperate deed more gallantly attempted. 



3l8 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

Tho attacking party was formed of the ist Bengal 
Fusileers ; and, their officers leading, the men ran 
with a dash at the lane. They were scourged with 
fire from the roofs to the left ; the guns in their 
front swept the lane with grape. But the men 
never faltered. They took the first gun with a 
rush, and raced on for the second. But the lane 
narrowed, and the "jam" checked the speed of 
the men. The fire of the enemy, concentrated on 
a front so narrow, was murderous. Stones and 
round shot thrown by hand from the roofs and 
parapets of the houses were added to musketry 
bullets and grape, and the stormers fell back, pant- 
ing and bleeding, but still full of the wrath of battle, 
and leaving the body of many a slain comrade scat- 
tered along the lane. 

Two or three men refused to turn back, and actu- 
ally reached the screen through which the further 
gun was fired. One of these was Lieutenant Butler, 
of the ist Bengal Fusileers. As he came at the run 
throusrh the white smoke he struck the screen 
heavily with his body ; at that moment two Sepoys 
on the inner side thrust through the screen with 
their bayonets. The shining deadly points of steel 
passed on either side of Butler's body, and he was 
pinned between them as between the suddenly apr 
pearing prongs of a fork ! Butler, twisting his head, 
saw through a loophole the faces of the two Sepoys 
Avho held the bayonets, and who were still vehe- 



DELHI : THE LEAP ON THE CITY 3 1 9 

mently pushing, under the belief that they held 
their enemy impaled. With his revolver he coolly 
shot them both, and then fell back, pelted with 
bullets, but, somehow, unhurt, to his comrades, who 
were re-forming for a second charge at the head of 
the lane. 

On came the Fusileers again, a cluster of officers 
leading, well in advance of their men. Major Jacob, 
who commanded the regiment, raced in that heroic 
group. Speke was there, the brother of the African 
explorer; Greville, Wemyss, and the gallant Butler 
once again. The first gun in the lane was captured 
once more, and Greville, a cool and skilful soldier, 
promptly spiked it. But the interval betwixt the 
first gun and the second, had to be crossed. It was 
only a hundred yards, but on every foot of it a cease- 
less and fiery hail of shot was beating. The ofiicers, 
as they led, went down one by one. Jacob, one of 
the most gallant soldiers of the whole siege, fell, mor- 
tally wounded. Jacob's special quality as a soldier was 
a strangely gentle but heroic coolness. The flame of 
battle left him at the temperature of an icicle; its 
thunder did not quicken his pulse by a single beat, 
and his soldiers had an absolute and exultant con- 
fidence in the quick sight, the swift action, the 
unfaltering composure of their gallant commander. 
Some of his men halted to pick him up when he fell, 
but he called to them to leave him, and press for- 
ward. Six other officers, one after another, were 



320 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

struck down ; the rush slackened, it paused, the men 
ebbed sullenly back ; the second attack had failed ! 

Nicholson, as the officer in general command of the 
assaulting columns, might well have remained at the 
Cashmere Gate, controlling the movements of the 
columns ; but his eager, vehement spirit carried him 
always to the fighting front. He first accompanied 
Campbell's column on its perilous march, but then 
rejoined his own proper column just as it came in 
sight of the Lahore Gate. The officers immediately 
about him — men themselves of the highest daring — 
advised that, as the attack of the fourth column had 
failed, it would be wise strategy to hold strongly the 
portion of the city they had carried and reorganise 
another general assault. They had done enough for 
the day. Their men had lost heavily, and were ex- 
hausted. They were in ignorance of the fortunes of 
the other columns. 

But Nicholson's fiery spirit was impatient of half 
measures or of delays. He was eager, moreover, to 
check the dangerous elation caused amongst the 
Sepoys by their repulse of the fourth column. So he 
resolutely launched a new assault on the Lahore Gate. 
How gallantly the officers led in an attack which yet 
their judgment condemned has been told. 

Nicholson watched the twice-repeated rush of the 
Fusileers, and the fall, one by one, of the officers who 
led them. When the men for a second time fell back, 
Nicholson himself sprang into the lane, and, waving 



DELHI: THE LEAP ON THE CITY 32 I 

his sword, called on his men, with the deep, vibrating 
voice all knew, to follow their general. But even 
while he spoke, his sword pointing up the lane, his 
face, full of the passion of battle, turned towards the 
broken, staggering front of his men, a Sepoy leaned 
from the window of a house close by, pointed his 
musket across a distance of little more than three 
yards at Nicholson's tall and stately figure, and shot 
him through the body. Nicholson fell. The wound 
was mortal ; but, raising himself up on his elbow, he 
still called on the men to " go on." He rejected im- 
patiently the eager help that was offered to him, 
and declared he would lie there till the lane was 
carried. But, as Kaye puts it, he was asking dying 
what he had asked living — that which was all but 
impossible. 

Colonel Graydon tells how he stooped over the 
fallen Nicholson, and begged to be allowed to con- 
vey him to a place of safety; but Nicholson de- 
clared "he would allow no man to remove him, but 
would die there." It was, in fact, a characteristic 
flash of chivalry that made Nicholson at last consent 
to be removed. He would allow no one to touch 
him, says Trotter, " except Captain Hay, of the 60th 
Native Infantry, with whom he was not upon friendly 
terms. ' I will make up my difference with you 
Hay,' he gasped out. ' I will let you take me back. ' " 

The lane was strewn with the British dead. To 
carry it without artillery was hopeless. There were 

X 



322 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

no better soldiers on the Ridgfe than the ist BensfcO,! 
Fusileers — " the dear old dirtj-shirts " of Lord Lake. 
When they, on the morning of that day, broke through 
the embrasures of the Cashmere battery, one of their 
officers has left on record the statement that "the 
Sepoys fled as they saw the white faces of the Fusi- 
leers looking sternly at them." They fled, that is, 
not from thrust of steel and flash of musket, but 
before the mere menace of those threatening, war- 
hardened countenances ! The ist, as a matter of fact, 
had their muskets slung behind, to enable them to 
use their hands in climbing the breach, and so, when 
they came up the crest of the breach and through 
the embrasures, the men had no muskets in their 
hands. The threat written on their faces literally put 
the Sepoys to flight. Where such men as these had 
failed, what troops could succeed ? 

The column fell slowly and sullenly back to the 
Cabul Gate, the wounded being sent to the rear. 
Lord Roberts tells us that, being sent by Wilson to 
ascertain how aff'airs were going on in the city, he 
observed as he rode through the Cashmere Gate a 
doolie by the side of the road without bearers, and 
with evidently a wounded man inside. Ho says : — 

I dismounted to see if I coukl be of an}- use to the occu- 
pant, when I found, to my grief and consternation, that it 
was John ISTicholson, with death written on his face. He 
told me that the bearers had put the doolie doAvn and had 
gone off to plunder ; that he was in great pain, and wished 



DELHI: THE LEAP ON THE CITY 323 

to be taken to the hospital. He was lying on his back, no 
wound was visible, and but for the pallor of his face, always 
colourless, there was no sign of the agony he must have 
been enduring. On my expressing a hope that he was not 
seriously wounded, he said, " T am dying ; there is no 
chance for me." The sight of that great man lying help- 
less and on the point of death was almost more than I 
could bear. Other men had daily died around me, friends 
and comrades had been killed beside me, but I never felt 
as I felt then — to lose Nicholson seemed to me at that 
moment to lose everything. 

Nicholson's fall, it is striking to note, impressed 
every one in that tiny and heroic army at Delhi ex- 
actly as it impressed Roberts. He lingered through 
all the days of slow, stubborn, resolute fighting, which 
won Delhi ; but day by day the news about Nichol- 
son's fluctuating life was almost more important 
than the tidings that this position or that had been 
carried. Nicholson was a man with Olive's genius 
for battle and mastery over men, while in the 
qualities of chivalry and honour he deserved to be 
classed with Outram or Havelock. He was only 
thirty-seven when he died ; what fame he might 
have won, had he lived, no man can tell. He was 
certainly one of the greatest soldiers the English- 
speaking race has produced. 

Many monuments havo been erected to Nicholson ; 
one over his actual grave, another — with an unfor- 
tunately elaborate inscription — in the parish church 
at Lisburn. But the fittest and most impressive 



324 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

monument is a plain obelisk erected on the crest 
of the Margalla Pass, the scene, in 1848, of one of 
his most daring exploits. There in the wild border 
pass stands the great stone pillar, and round it still 
gathers many a native tradition of the daring and 
might of the great sahib. Sir Donald Macnab says 
that when the worshippers of " Nikkul-Seyn " in 
Hazara heard of his death, " they came together to 
lament, and one of them stood forth and said there 
was no gain from living in a world that no longer 
held Nikalsain. So he cut his throat deliberately 
and died." The others, however, reflected that this 
was not the way to serve their great guru ; they 
must learn to worship '' Nikalsain's God " ; and 
the entire sect actually accepted Christianity on 
the evidence of Nicholson's personality ! 

Campbell's column, meanwhile, had fought its way 
across two-thirds of the city, and come in sight of 
the massive arched gateway of the Jumma Musjid. 
But the engineers that accompanied the column had 
fallen ; Campbell had no artillery to batter down the 
great gate of the mosque, and no bags of powder 
with which to blow it up. He was, however, a 
stubborn Scottish veteran, and he clung to his 
position in front of the mosque till he learnt of 
the failure to carry the Lahore Gate. Then, judg- 
ing with soldierly coolness that it would be impossible 
to hold unsupported the enormously advanced posi- 
tion he had won, he fell back in leisurely fashion 



DELHI : THE LEAP ON THE CITY 325 

till he came into touch with the reserve column 
at the Cashmere Gate. 

The British columns had been fighting for over 
six hours, and had lost 66 officers and 11 04 men, 
or very nearly every fourth man in the assaulting 
force. Amongst the fallen, too, were many of the 
most daring spirits in the whole force, the men who 
were the natural leaders in every desperate enter- 
prise. Less than 4000 of the brave men who 
followed Nicholson and Jones and Campbell across 
the breaches or through the Cashmere Gate that 
morning remained unwounded, and there were 
40,000 Sepoys yet in Delhi ! Of the great " egg," 
too, which formed the city, the British held only 
the tiny northern extremity. 

Under these conditions Wilson's nerve once more 
failed him. He doubted whether he ought to persist 
in the assault. Was it not safer to fall back on the 
Ridge? Repeatedly, in fact, through the days of 
stubborn fighting which followed, Wilson meditated 
the fatal policy of retreat. He was worn-out in mind 
and body. His nerve had failed at Meerut when the 
Mutiny first broke out ; it threatened to fail again 
here at Delhi, in the very crisis of the assault. To 
walk a few steps exhausted him. And it was 
fortunate for the honour of England and the fate 
of India that Wilson had round him at that crisis 
men of sterner fibre than his own. Some one told 
Nicholson, as he lay on his death-bed, of Wilson's 



326 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

hesitations. " Thank God," whispered Nicholson, " I 
have strength yet to shoot him if necessary ! " 

Wilberforce, in his " Unrecorded Chapter of the 
Indian Mutiny," gives a somewhat absurd, and not 
too credible, account of the incident which, accord- 
ing to him, kept Wilson's nerve steady at that crisis. 
The 52nd, after so many hours of fighting, had fallen 
back on the reserve at the Cashmere Gate, and Wil- 
berforce, who belonged to that regiment, was occupied 
with a brother officer in compounding a "long" glass 
of brandy and soda to quench his thirst. His com- 
panion poured in so generous an allowance of brandy 
that he was afraid to drink it. He says : — 

Not liking to waste it, we looked round us, and saw 
a group of officers on the steps of the church, apparently 
engaged in an aiaimated conversation. Among them was 
an old man, who looked as if a good " peg " (the common 
term for a brandy and soda) would do him good. Draw- 
ing, therefore, neai'er the group, in order to offer the 
" peg " to the old officer, we heard our colonel say, " All 
I can say is that I won't retire, but will hold the walls 
with my regiment." I then offered our " peg " to the 
old officer, whom we afterwards knew to be General 
Wilson. He accepted it, drank it off, and a few minutes 
after we heard him say, " You are quite right — to retire 
would be to court disaster ; we will stay where we are ! " 

" On such little matters," Wilberforce gravely re- 
flects, " great events often depend ! " The course of 
British history in India, in a word, was decisively 
affected by that accidental glass of brandy and soda 



DELHI: THE LEAP ON THE CITY 327 

he oft'ered to General Wilson ! It tightened his 
shaken nerves to the key of resolution ! Wilber- 
force's book belongs rather to the realm of fiction 
than of grave history, and his history-making glass 
of brandy and soda may be dismissed as a flight of 
fancy. It was the cool judgment and the un- 
faltering daring of men like Baird Smith and 
Neville Chamberlain, and other gallant spirits im- 
mediately around Wilson, which saved him from 
the tragedy of a retreat. When Wilson asked Baird 
Smith whether it was possible to hold the ground 
they had won, the curt, decisive answer of that fine 
soldier was, " We viiist hold it ! " And that white 
flame of heroic purpose burnt just as intensely in 
the whole circle of Wilson's advisers. 

The British troops held their position undisturbed 
on the night of the 14th. The 15th was spent in 
restoring order and preparing for a new assault. 
There is a curious conflict of testimony as to 
whether or not the troops had got out of hand 
owing to mere drunkenness. It is certain that 
enormous stores of beer, spirits, and wine were 
found in that portion of the city held by the 
British. Lord Roberts says, " I did not see a 
single drunken man throughout the day of assault, 
and I visited every position held by our troops 
within the walls of the city." This bit of evidence 
seems final. Yet it would be easy to quote a dozen 
witnesses to prove that there was drunkenness to 



3 28 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

a perilous extent amongst the troops, and it is 
certain that Wilson found it expedient to give 
orders for the destruction of the whole of the vast 
stores of beer and spirits which had fallen into his 
hands. 

A new plan of attack was devised by the 
engineers. Batteries were armed with guns captured 
from the enemy, and a destructive fire main- 
tained on the chief positions yet held in the city. 
The attacks, too, were now directed, not along the 
narrow streets and winding lanes of the city, but 
through the houses themselves. Thus wall after 
wall was broken through, house after house cap- 
tured, the Sepoys holding them were bayoneted, 
and so a stern and bloody path was driven to the 
Lahore Gate. 

On the 1 6th the famous magazine which Wil- 
loughby had blown up, when Delhi fell into the 
hands of the rebels early in May, was captured, 
and it was found that Willoughby's heroic act had 
been only partially successful. The magazine, that 
is, was less than half destroyed, and the British 
found in it no fewer than 171 guns, mostly of 
large calibre, with enormous stores of ammunition. 
The Sepoys read their doom in the constant flight 
of shells from the British batteries in the city. 
They read it, in almost plainer characters, in the 
stubborn daring with which a path was being 
blasted through the mass of crowded houses to- 



DELHI: THE LEAP ON THE CITY 329 

wards the Lahore Gate. And froni the southern 
extremity of the city there commenced a great 
human leakage, a perpetual dribble of deserting 
Sepoys and flying budmashes. 

Lord Koberts served personally with the force 
driving its resolute way across houses, courtyards, 
and lanes, towards the Lahore Gate, and he tells, 
graphically, the story of its exploits. On Septem- 
ber 19, the men had broken their way through to 
the rear of the Burn Bastion. Only the width of the 
lane separated them from the bastion itself. The 
little party, 100 strong — only one-half of them 
British — gathered round the door that opened on 
the lane, the engineer officer burst it open, and 
Gordon, of the 75 th Foot, leading, the handful of 
gallant men dashed across the lane, leaped upon the 
ramp, raced up it, and jumped into the bastion. 
They bayoneted or shot its guards, and captured 
the bastion without losing a man ! 

The next day, with great daring, Roberts and 
Lang of the Engineers, following a native guide, 
crept through the tangle of courtyards and lanes, 
till they reached the upper room of a house within 
fifty yards of the Lahore Gate. '■ From the window 
of this room," says Roberts, " we could see beneath 
us the Sepoys lounging about, engaged in cleaning 
their muskets and other occupations ; while some, 
in a lazy sort of fashion, were acting as sentries 
over the gateway and two guns, one of which 



330 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

pointed in the direction of the Sabzi Mandi, the 
other down the lane behind the ramparts, leading 
to the Burn Bastion and Cabul Gate. I could see 
from the number on their caps that these Sepoys 
belonged to the 5 th Native Infantry." The troops 
were brought up silently by the same route, and 
leaped suddenly on the gate, capturing it, and slay- 
ing or putting to terrified flight the Sepoys whom 
Lang and Roberts had watched in such a mood of 
careless and opium-fed unconcern only a few minutes 
before. 

The party that captured the Lahore Gate then 
moved up the great street running from- it through 
the Silver Bazaar — its shops all closed — till they 
reached the Delhi Bank, which they carried. Another 
column forced its way into the Jumma Musjid, 
blowing in its gates without loss. 



CHAPTER XII 

DELHI : RETEIBUTION 

THERE remained the great palace, the last strong- 
hold of the Mutiny, a building famous in history 
and in romance. The 6oth Rifles Avere launched 
against it, the gates were blown open, and the troops 
broke their way in. They found it practically 
deserted. The garrison had fled, the king and his 
household were fugitives, and the clash of British 
bayonets, the tramp of British feet, rang through 
the abandoned halls and ruined corridors of the 
palace of the Mogul. 

The flight of the garrison from the imperial palace 
had been hastened by a very gallant feat of arms. 
Between the palace and the bridge crossing the 
Jumna is a strong fort, a sort of outwork to the 
palace, called the Selingarh. An ofiicer. Lieutenant 
Aikman, with a party of Wilde's Sikhs, had been 
despatched to reconnoitre along the river front. 
Aikman, who knew the ground thoroughly, and 
who was of a daring temper, determined to make 
a dash at the Selingarh, and so prevent the escape 
of the king and his court across the river. With 
his handful of Sikhs, Aikman carried the Selingarh 



S32 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

with one fierce rush, and seized the passage con- 
necting the rear gate of the palace with the fort, 
thus plugging up that opportunity for flight. The 
king, with his court, as it happened, had fled al- 
ready, but as Aikman held the rear gate of the 
palace, while the 6oth Rifles blew in its front gates, 
all who remained in it were made prisoners. 

That the imperial palace should have been carried 
almost without loss of life seems wonderful. It 
proves how completely the spirit of the Sepoys 
had been broken by the fiery valour of the British 
assaults. Yet even the capture of the palace was 
marked b}^ some curious, though isolated, examples 
of courage on the part of the rebels. 

Hope Grant, for example, records that a sentry 
was found at one of the palace gates dressed and 
equi23ped according to regulation, and marching up 
and down on his beat with his musket on his 
shoulder. " In a museum at Naples," he adds, " is 
to be seen the skull and helmet of a man who was 
found buried at his post in a sentry-box in the 
midst of the lava. The inscription states the 
occupant to have been a ' brave soldier ' ; but no- 
thing could have been braver or cooler than the 
conduct of this Sepoy, who must have known that 
his fate was sealed." Roberts, who shared in the 
rush for the palace gates, adds another curious 
example of Sepoy courage. They found the re- 
cesses in the long passage which led to the palace 



DELHI : RETRIBUTION 33 3 

buildings packed with wounded men, but about 
thirty yards up the passage stood a Sepoy in the 
uniform of a grenadier of the 37th Native Infantry. 
The man stood quietly as the British came along 
the passage, with his musket on his hip. Then he 
coolly raised his musket and fired at the advancing 
party, sending his bullet through the helmet of the 
leading Englishman. Next, dropping his musket 
to the level, he charged single-handed down on the 
entire detachment of the 60th, and was killed ! 

Colonel Jones, who commanded the Rifles, sent 
a pencilled note to Wilson announcing, with soldier- 
like brevity, " Blown open the gate and got possession 
of the palace." 

At sunrise on the morning of September 21a royal 
salute rang over Delhi, its pulses of deep sound pro- 
claiming to all India that the sacred city, the home 
and stronghold of the revolt, was once more in 
British hands. That same day Wilson moved in 
from his rough camp on the Ridge, and established 
his headquarters in the Dewan-i-khas, the king's 
private hall of audience. 

But if Delhi was captured, the King of Delhi, with 
all the leading figures in the Mutiny, yet remained 
free, and might easily become the centre of new 
troubles. The rebel commander-in-chief felt that 
the game was up when the Burn Bastion was carried, 
and he fled from the city that night, carrying with 
him most of his troops. He urged the king to flee 



3 34 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

with liim, and to renew the war in the open country, 
where his name would have all the masrical charm 
of a spell on the imagination of the common people. 
But the unhappy king was old and tired. His nerve 
had been dissolved in the sloth and sensualities of 
an Indian court. His favourite wife strongly opposed 
flight, in the interests of her child, whom she hoped 
to see succeeding the king. 

The unhappy monarch, in a word, could neither 
flee nor stay, and he took refuge in a stately cluster 
of famous buildings named Humayon's Tomb, some 
seven miles out of Delhi. Hodson, the daring and 
famous captain of Light Horse, ascertained this, and 
with some trouble extracted from Wilson permission 
to attempt the capture of the king, with strict instruc- 
tions to promise him his life. Taking fifty picked 
men from his regiment, Hodson rode out on one of 
the most audacious expeditions ever undertaken. 

The road to Humayon's Tomb at one point runs 
underneath a strong tower, where the king had at 
flrst taken refuge, and which was still filled with his 
adherents. Fierce dark faces looked down from its 
parapets and from every arrow-slit in its walls as 
Hodson, with his little cluster of horsemen, rode 
past. But in the Englishman's stern face and cool, 
unflurried bearing there was something which awed 
those who looked on him, and not a shot was fired as 
the party rode by on their stern errand. 

Hodson and his men reached the spot where the 



DELHI : RETRIBUTION 3 3 5 

tomb lifts its dome of stainless marble high in the 
air. In one of the chambers of that great pillar sat, 
trembling, the last heir of the house of Timonr; in 
the cloisters at its foot were some thousands of the 
servants and hangers-on of the palace, armed and 
excited. 

For two hours Hodson sat in his saddle before the 
gate, his men posted — a slender chain of cavalry — 
round the tomb, while messengers passed to and fro 
between him and the king. " Picture to yourself," 
said Hodson's brother, when telling the story, " the 
scene before that magnificent gateway, with the 
milk-white domes of the tomb towering up from 
Avithin, One white man, amongst a host of natives, 
determined to secure his prisoner or perish in the 
attempt ! " 

The king at last consented to come out and deliver 
himself to Hodson, but only on condition that he 
repeated with his own lips Wilson's promise of safety 
for his life. Presently the king came out, carried 
in a bullock-carriage, and Hodson spurred his horse 
forward and demanded the king's arms. The king 
asked him whether he were Hodson Bahadur, and if 
he promised him his life. Hodson gave the required 
promise, but added grimly that if any attempt were 
made at a rescue he would shoot the king down like 
a dog ! Then the procession, at a foot walk, moved 
on to the city, thousands of natives following and 
gazing in wonder at the lordly figure of that solitary 



336 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

Englishman carrying off their king alone. But 
Hodson's calm and dauntless bearing acted as a 
spell on the crowd. 

Bit by bit the multitude slunk away, and, with his 
fifty horsemen and his group of prisoners, Hods'^n 
rode up to the Lahore Gate. " What have you got 
in that palkee ? " asked the officer on duty. " Only 
the King of Delhi!" said Hodson. The clustering 
guard at the gate were with difficulty kept from 
cheering. The little group moved up the stately 
Silver Bazaar to the palace gate, where Hodson 
delivered over his royal prisoners to the civil officer 
in charge. " By Jove, Hodson," said that astonished 
official, " they ought to make you Commander-in- 
Chief for this ! " When Hodson reported his success 
to Wilson, that general's ungracious and characteristic 
comment was, " Well, I'm glad you've got him. But 
I never expected to see either you or him again ! " 

Hope Grant tells how he went to see the fallen 
monarch in his prison: — 

He was an old man, said by one of the servants to be 
ninety years of age, short in stature, slight, very fair for a 
native, and with a high-bred, delicate-looking cast of 
featvu'es. Truly the dignity had departed from the Great 
Mogul, whose ancestors had once been lords of princely 
possessions in India. It might have been supposed that 
death wovild have been preferable to such humiliation, but 
it is wonderful how we all cling to the shreds of life. 
When I saw the poor old man he was seated on a wretched 
charpoy, or native bed, with his legs crossed before him, 



DELHI : RETRIBUTION 337 

and swinging his body backwards and forwards with an 
unconscious dreamy look. I asked him one or two ques- 
tions, and was surprised to hear an unpleasantly vulgar 
voice answering from behind a small screen. I was told 
that this proceeded from his begum, or queen, who pre- 
vented him from replying, fearful lest he might say some- 
thing which should compromise their safety. 

Sir Richard Temple, who prepared the evidence for 
the trial of the ex- king of Delhi, paid many visits to 
the ill-fated monarch during his confinement. " It 
was a strange sight," he says, " to see the aged man, 
seated in a darkened chamber of his palace ; the finely 
chiselled features, arched eyebrows, aquiline profile,, 
the sickly pallor of the olive complexion, nervous 
twitching of the face, delicate fingers counting beads, 
muttering speech, incoherent language, irritable self- 
consciousness — altogether made up a curious picture. 
Here sat the last of the Great Moguls, the descen- 
dant of emperors two centuries ago ruling the 
second largest population in the world; who had 
himself, though a phantom sovereign, been treated 
with regal honours. He was now about to be 
tried for his life by judges whose forefathers had 
sued for favour and protection from his imperial 
ancestors." 

But there still remained uncaptured the two sons 
and the grandson of the king. The princes had a 
very evil fame. They had tortured and slain English 
prisoners. They had been the leading figures in the 

Y 



338 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

Mutiny. Their hands were red with innocent blood, 
the blood of little children and of helpless women. 
The princes — Mirza Mogul, at one time the com- 
mander-in-chief of the rebel forces, Mirza Khejoo 
Sultan, and Mirza Aboo Bukir, the son of the late 
heir-apparent — with some 6000 or 7000 followers, 
had occupied Humayon's Tomb after the king's 
capture, partly in a mood of fatalistic despair, and 
partly with the expectation that they might find the 
same mercy the king had found. 

Macdowell, who was second in command of Hod- 
son's Horse, tells how, on September 21, he got a 
note from Hodson, " Come sharp ; bring 100 men." 
He rode off at once, and, on meeting, Hodson ex- 
plained that he had ascertained that the three 
princes were in Humayon's Tomb, and he meant 
to bring them in. 

Hodson rode to the tomb, halted his troop out- 
side it, and sent in a messenger demanding the 
surrender of the princes. They asked for a promise 
of their lives, but Hodson sternly refused any such 
pledge. As Hodson and Macdowell sat, side by 
side, on their horses, they could hear the stormy 
shouts of the followers of the princes begging to 
be led out against the infidels. But Hodson's 
audacity and iron resolve prevailed, as they pre- 
vailed the day before in the case of the king. 
The princes sent word that they were coming ; and 
presently a small bullock-cart made its appearance. 



DELHI: RETRIBUTION 339 

The princes were in it, and behind came some 
3000 armed retainers. 

Hodson allowed the cart to come up to his line, 
ordered the driver to move on, and then formed 
up his troop, by a single, quick movement, between 
the cart and the crowd. The troopers advanced at 
a walk upon the crowd, that fell sullenly and re- 
luctantly back. Hodson sent on the cart containing 
the princes in charge of ten of his men, while he 
sternly, and step by step, pressed the crowd back 
into the enclosure surrounding the tomb ; then, 
leaving his men outside, Hodson, with Macdowell 
and four troopers, rode up the steps into the arch, 
and called on the crowd to lay down their arms. 
" There was a murmur," says Macdowell, who tells 
the story. " He reiterated the command, and (God 
knows why, I never can understand it !) they com- 
menced doing so." He adds : — 

Now, you see, we didn't want their arms, and under 
ordinary circumstances would not have risked oiir lives 
in so rash a way. But what we wanted was to gain 
time to get the princes away, for we could have done 
nothing, had they attacked vis, but cut our way back, 
and very little chance of doing even this successfully. 
Well, there we stayed for two hours, collecting their 
arms, and I assure you I thought every moment they 
would rush upon us. I said nothing, but smoked all 
the time, to show I was unconcerned ; but at last, when 
it was all done, and all the arms collected, put in a 
cart, and started, Hodson turned to me and said, " We'll 



340 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

go now." Very slowly we mounted^ formed up the 
troop, and cautiously departed, followed by the crowd. 
We rode along quietly. You will say, why did we not 
charge them ? I merely say, we were one hundred 
men, and they were fully 6000. I am not exagger- 
ating ; the official reports will show you it is all true. 
As we got about a mile off, Hodson turned to me and 
said, " Well, Mac, we've got them at last " ; and we 
both gave a sigh of relief. Never in my life, under 
the heaviest fire, have I been in such imminent danger. 
Everybody says it is the most dashing and daring thing 
that has been done for years (not on my part, for I 
merely obeyed orders, but on Hodson's, who planned 
and carried it out). 

Hodson and Macdowell quickly overtook the cart 
carrying the princes, but a crowd had gathered 
round the vehicle, and pressed on the very horses 
of the troopers, " What shall we do with them ? " 
said Hodson to his lieutenant. Then, answering his 
own question, he added, " I think we had better 
shoot them here. We shall never get them in ! " 
And Hodson proceeded to do that daring, cruel, 
much-abused, much-praised deed. 

He halted his troop, put five troopers across the 
road, in front and behind the cart, ordered the 
princes to strip ; then, taking a carbine from one 
of his troopers, he shot them Avith his own hand, 
first, in a loud voice, explaining to his troopers and 
the crowd who they were, and what crimes they 
had done. The shuddering crowd gazed at this 



DELHI: RETRIBUTION 34 1 

tall, stern, inflexible sahib, with his flowing beard, 
Avhite face, and deep over-mastering voice, shooting 
one by one their princes ; but no hand was lifted 
in protest. 

Hodson. showed no hurry. He made the doomed 
princes strip, that the act might seem an execution, 
not a murder. He shot them Avith his own hand, 
for, had he ordered a trooper to have done it, and 
the man had hesitated, a moment's pause might 
have kindled the huge swaying breathless crowd 
to flame. 

Critics in an overwhelming majority condemn 
Hodson's act. Roberts, whose judgment is mildest, 
says his feeling is " one of sorrow that such a 
brilliant soldier should have laid himself open to 
so much adverse criticism." Hodson himself wrote 
on the evening of the same day, " I made up my 
mind at the time to be abused. I was convinced 
I was right, and when I prepared to run the great 
physical risk of the attempt I was equally game 
for the moral risk of praise or blame. These have 
not been, and are not, times when a man who 
would serve his country dare hesitate as to the 
personal consequences to himself of what he thinks 
his duty." 

Perhaps, however, Hodson was scarcely a cool 
judge as to what " duty " might be in such a case. 
The outrages which accompanied the Mutiny had 
kindled his fierce nature into a flame. " If ever I get 



342 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

into Delhi," he had said, Aveeks before, " the house 
of Timour won't be worth five minutes' purchase!" 
Hodson's "five minutes" proved inadequate; but, 
writing afterwards, on the very day he shot the 
princes, he recorded, " In twenty-four hours I dis- 
posed of the principal members of the house of 
Timour the Tartar. I am not cruel, but I confess I 
did rejoice in the opportunity of ridding the earth 
of these ruffians." 

Macdowell writes the epitaph of the princes : " So 
ended the career of the chiefs of the revolt and of 
the greatest villains that ever shamed humanity." 

The bodies were driven into Delhi and cast on a 
raised terrace in front of the Kotwallee. Cave- 
Browne, who was chaplain to the forces at the time, 
comments on the curious fact that this was the very 
spot where the worst crimes of the princes had been 
committed. " It was," he says, " a dire retribution ! 
On the very spot where, four months ago, English 
women and children had suffered every form of in- 
dignity and death, there now lay exposed to the scoff 
and scorn of the avenging army, three scions of the 
royal house, Avho had been chief among the fiends of 
Delhi." 

The story of the siege of Delhi is one of the most 
wonderful chapters in the history of war. The besieg- 
ing army never amounted to 10,000 men; it some- 
times sank below 5000. For weeks the British had 
thus to face an enemy exceeding themselves in 



DELHI : RETRIBUTION 343 

number sometimes by a ratio of ten to one, and 
with an overwhelming superiority of artillery. They 
fouQ-ht no fewer than thirtv-two battles with the 
enemy, and did not lose one ! For three months 
every man, not sick, in the whole force had to be 
under arms every day, and sometimes both by night 
and day. The men were scorched by the heat of the 
sun, wasted with dysentery and cholera, worn out 
with toil. 

A new and strange perplexity was added to the 
situation by the fact that many of the native troops 
on the Ridge were notoriously disloyal. The British 
officers sometimes ran as much danger of being shot 
by their own troops behind them as by the Sepoys 
in front. Early in July the 4th Sikhs were purged 
of Hindustanis, as these could not be trusted. 
General Barnard had to abandon one plan of assault 
on Delhi, because at the last moment he discovered 
a conspiracy amongst the native soldiers in the camp 
to join the enemy. The strength of the force was 
sapped by sickness as well as by disloyalty. 

On August 31, for example, out of under 11,000 
men 2977 were in hospital. Of their total effective 
force, nearly 4000 — or two out of every five — were 
killed, or died of wounds received in battle. Yet 
they never lost heart, never faltered or murmured or 
failed. And after twelve weeks of such a struggle, 
they at last stormed in open day a strong city, with 
walls practically unbreached, and defended by 30,000 



344 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

revolted Sepoys. This is a record never surpassed, 
and seldom paralleled, in liistory ! 

Months afterwards, Lawrence, looking from the 
Ridge over the scene of the long and bloody struggle, 
said to his companion with a sigh, " Think of all the 
genius and bravery buried here ! " The environs of 
Delhi, the reverse slope of that rocky crest from 
Avhich the British guns thundered on the rebel city, 
are indeed sown thick with the graves of brave men 
who died to maintain the British Empire in India. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE STORMING OF LUCKNOW 

With the fall of Delhi the tale of the Great 
Mutiny practically ends. Lucknow, it is true, 
remained to be captured. The broken forces of the 
mutineers had to be crushed in detail. A new system 
of civil administration had to be built up. The 
famous Company itself vanished — the native pro- 
phecy that the raj of the Company would last only 
a hundred years from Plassey thus being curiously 
fulfilled; and on September i, 1858 — less than a year 
after Delhi fell — the Queen was proclaimed through- 
out India as its Sovereign. But Hodson, who in 
addition to being a great soldier had a wizard-like 
insight into the real meaning of events, was right 
when, on the evening of the day on which the British 
Hag was hoisted once more over the royal palace at 
Delhi, he wrote in his journal: "This day will be a 
memorable one in the annals of the empire. The 
restoration of British rule in the East dates from 
September 20, 1857." 

Yet there would be a certain failure in the dramatic 
completeness of the story were it to end leaving 
Lucknow in the hands of the rebels. The tale of 

345 



346 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

the storming of the capital of Oude must be added 
as a pendant to that other great siege which planted 
the British flag on the walls of Delhi. 

There was, in a sense, no "siege" of Lucknow by 
the British, There was no investment, no formal 
approaches, no zigzag of trenches. It was a storm, 
rather than a siege — though the fighting stretched 
from March 2 to March 21, 1858. But it was the last 
of the great military operations of the campaign 
which crushed the Mutiny. The fall of the city 
left the historic revolt without a centre. The war, 
henceforth, always excepting the brilliant campaign 
of Sir Hugh Rose in the Central Provin-ces, became 
a guerilla campaign ; a campaign of petty sieges, of 
the hunting down of one Sepoy leader after another, 
of the rout of this petty body of mutineers, or of that. 
It is curious to note how great civilians and great 
soldiers differed in judgment as to the policy of 
undertaking the recapture of LucknoAv at that par- 
ticular moment. Colin Campbell's strategy was to 
conduct a cool campaign in the hills of Rohilcund, 
and leave Lucknow alone for the present. That city 
would serve as a sort of draining ground, a centre 
into which all the mutineers would flow ; and 
when cool weather came, Campbell, imprisoning 
Lucknow in a girdle of converging columns, would 
destroy or capture the mutineers in one vast " bag." 
This was leisurely and wary strategy ; but it over- 
looked the political elements in the problem. It 



THE STORMING OF LUCKNOW 347 

Avas the scheme of a soldier rather than of a 
statesman. Lucknow, left for months undisturbed, 
would be a signal of hope for every revolted chief 
and mutinous Sepo}?-. It might well take the place 
of Delhi as the brain and heart of the Mutiny. 
It would be a sign to all India that the British did 
not feel themselves strong enough, as yet, to strike 
at the centre of the rebel power. 

The civilian was wiser than the soldier, and Lord 
Canning's views prevailed. But it is worth notmg 
that Colin Campbell's plan of "bagging" all the 
mutineers with one vast, far-stretching sweep in 
Lucknow would have been carried into effect on 
Lord Canning's lines, but for a double blunder, which 
marked Campbell's own conduct of the siege. 

It Avas a great task to which the British Com- 
mander-in-chief now addressed himself. Lucknow 
was a huge honeycomb of native houses ; a city more 
than twenty miles in circumference, with a turbu- 
lent population calculated variously at from 300,000 
to 1,000,000 people. It had a garrison of 130,000 
fighting men, with an overwhelming force of artillery. 
The Sepoy leaders, too, who knew the value of the 
spade in war, had spent months in making the city, 
as they believed, impregnable. Both Havelock and 
Colin Campbell, in fighting their way to the Residency, 
had broken into the city from the eastern front ; and 
the Sepoys, with a touching simplicity, took it for 
granted that the third attack on the city would follow 



348 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

the lines of the earlier assaults. The British, that is, 
"vvould cross the canal, and force a path to the Resi- 
dency through the great gardens and stately buildings 
which occupied the space betwixt the mass of the 
city and the Goomtee ; and they accordingly barred 
this approach by a triple line of formidable defences. 
The first was a vast flanked rampart, on the inner 
side of the canal, and to which the canal served as 
a wet ditch. The second was a great circular earth- 
work, like the curve of a railway embankment, 
which enclosed the Mess-house. Behind it rose what 
was, in fact, the citadel of Lucknow, the Kaisarbagh, 
or King's Palace. Both these lines stretched from 
the river on one flank, to the mass of houses which 
constituted the town, on the other flank. They 
might be pierced, they could not be turned ; and.they 
bristled from flank to flank with heavy guns. The 
third line was a stupendous earthwork, covering the 
whole north front of the King's Palace. Its guns 
swept the narrow space betwixt the palace and the 
river with their fire. 

Each great building along this line of advance 
was itself a fortress, and everything which ingenuity 
could- suggest, and toil execute, had been done to 
make the defence formidable. The task of fighting 
a way across these triple lines, and through this 
tangle of fortified houses, each girdled with rifle- 
pits, and loopholed from foundation to roof, might 
well have been deemed impossible. 



THE STORMING OF LUCKNOW 349 

In the previous November Colin Campbell bad 
rescued the garrison of the Kesidency ; but he was 
compelled to surrender Luchnow itself to the rebels. 
With great wisdom and audacity, however, he clung 
to the Alumbagh, planting Outram there, with a force 
of about 4000 men. The Alumbagh, thus held, was a 
sort of pistol levelled at the head of Lucknow, or a spear 
threatening its heart. It was a perpetual menace; 
a sign that the British still kept their hold of the 
revolted city, and, on some bloody errand of revenge, 
would speedily return to it. The task of holding a 
position so perilous exactly suited Outram's cool brain 
and serene courage. He had nothing of Nicholson's 
tempestuous valour, or of Hodson's audacious dar- 
ing. He lacked initiative. The temper which made 
Nelson, at Copenhagen, put the telescope to his blind 
eye, when his admiral was trying to call him oif from 
the fight, was one which Outram could hardly have 
understood ; and it was a temper which certainly 
never stirred in his own blood. But, given a definite 
task, Outram might be trusted to do it with perfect 
intelligence, and, if necessary, to die cheerfully in the 
doing of it. 

For three months he held that perilous post in 
front of Lucknow, a tiny handful of troops bearding 
a great revolted city, with a garrison of 100,000 fight- 
ing men. He was attacked on front and rear and 
flank, and, more than once, with a force of over 60,000 
men. No less than six great attacks, indeed, can be 



3 50 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

counted. But Outram held his post with exquisite 
skill and unshaken valour. His troops were veterans ; 
his officers were fighters of unsurpassed quality. 
Brasyer commanded his Sikhs; Barrow and Wale 
led his scanty squadrons of horse; Vincent Eyre, 
Olpherts, and Maude, commanded his guns. With 
such troops, and such leaders, Outram, for more 
than three months, held his daring post in front of 
Lucknow, and beat back, with vast loss of life, the 
attacks hurled upon him. And the Alumbagh, 
thus victoriously held, served as a screen, behind 
which Campbell's forces gathered for the leap on 
Lucknow. 

Colin Campbell was happily delivered from the 
evil condition which had hitherto fettered all the 
operations of the British. He was not required to 
attempt, with a handful of men, the task of a great 
army. He had under his hands the finest fighting 
force any British general in India had yet com- 
manded, an army of 31,000 men, with 164 guns. Of 
these, 9000 were Ghoorkas — the Nepaulese contin- 
gent under Jung Bahadur. It was late in reaching 
the field, and Campbell doubted whether he ought 
to wait for the Ghoorkas. But here, again, the 
civilian proved wiser than the soldier. " I am sure," 
wrote Lord Canning, " we ought to wait for the Jung 
Bahadur, who would be driven Avild to find himself 
deprived of a share in the work." It was a political 
gain of the first order to show the greatest fighting 




LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR JAMES OUTRAM, Bart., G.CB. 
From a painting by Thomas Brigstocke 



THE STORMING OF LUCKNOW 35 I 

prince in India arrayed under the Britisli flag against 
the Mutiny. 

Hope Grant, with the present Lord Roberts as his 
A.A.G., commanded the cavalry; Archdale Wilson 
the guns ; Napier — afterwards of Magdala fame — 
the engineers. Outram, Lugard, and Walpole com- 
manded the three infantry divisions. It was a fine 
army, admirably officered and led, and made a perfect 
fighting machine. And of all Campbell's generals, 
no one, perhaps, served him better than did Robert 
Napier. He supplied the plan of attack, which made 
the Sepoy defences Avorthless, and enabled Lucknow 
to be carried, practically, in fourteen days, and at a 
loss of only 125 officers and men killed, and less than 
600 wounded. 

The east front, which was to be attacked, resembled, 
roughly, a boot laid on its side. A great canal, run- 
ning north and south, is the sole of the " boot " ; the 
river Goomtee curves round the toe, and, runningf 
back sharply to the south, defines the top of the foot, 
and stretches up to what may be described as the 
ankle. The road across the Dilkusha bridge pierces 
the centre of what we have called the " sole," and 
the triple line of Sepoy defences barred this line of 
approach. Napier's plan was to bridge the Goomtee, 
pass a strong force, with heavy guns, in a wide sweep 
round the " toe " of the boot, on the northern bank 
of the river. The heavy guns, when placed in posi- 
tion on the north bank, would take in reverse all the 



3 52 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

Sepoy defences, and smite with a direct and over- 
whelming fire the chief positions — the Mess-house, 
the Secundrabagh, and the Residency, &c., which the 
Sepoys held. The Sepoy generals had constructed 
no defences on the north bank of the river, though 
it was strongly held by the rebel cavalry. Outram 
was to command the force operating from the north 
bank of the river. When his guns had swept the 
Sepoy defences from flank to flank, then the British 
left would advance, cross the Dilkusha bridge, and 
fight its way up to the Kaisarbagh and the Resi- 
dency, Outram, with his flanking gun-fire, always 
pushing ahead. 

The British right and left were thus like the two 
blades of a pair of scissors, thrust through the web of 
the Sepoy defences ; and when the " scissors " closed, 
those defences would be cut clean through from east 
to west. 

Campbell began his operations on the morning of 
March 3. Forbes-Mitchell, who stood in the ranks of 
the 93rd, looked out with a soldier's eye over the 
domed mosques and sky-piercing minarets of the 
doomed city, sharp-cut against the morning sky. " I 
don't think," he writes, " I ever saw a prettier scene." 
Forbes-Mitchell was not an artist, only a hard- 
fighting private in the 93rd ; but Russell of the 
Times, who was familiar with all the great cities 
of the world, was just as deeply impressed as Forbes- 
Mitchell with the aspect that Lucknow wore that 



THE STORMING OF LUCKNOW 353 

fateful morning, when the red tide of war was about 
to fill and flood its streets. This is hoAV Russell 
describes the scene: "A vision of palaces, minarets, 
domes, azure and golden, cupolas, colonnades, long 
fa9ades of fair perspective, in pillar and column, 
terraced roofs — all rising up amid a calm, still ocean 
of the brightest verdure. Look for miles and miles 
away, and still the ocean spreads, and the towers of 
the fairy city gleam in its midst. Spires of gold 
glitter in the sun. Turrets and gilded spheres shine 
like constellations. There is nothing mean or squalid 
to be seen. Here is a city more vast than Paris, as it 
seems, and more brilliant, lying before us." 

But there was the grim face of war hidden beneath 
the mask of smiling beauty which Lucknow presented 
that March morning. The soldiers, as they stood in 
their ranks, could see, line beyond line, the frowning 
Sepoy defences ; while, in the foreground. Peel, with 
his bluejackets, was getting his heavy i6-pounders 
into position for the fierce duel about to begin. Colin 
Campbell's movement on his left, however, was but a 
feint, designed to mislead the enemy's generals. On 
the night of the 4th the construction of two bridges 
across the Goomtee was begun. On the morning of 
the 5th one of them was completed, and the British 
infantry crossed, and threw up earthworks to defend 
the bridge-head. By midnight on the 5 th both 
bridges were complete, with their approaches, and by 
four o'clock the troops were crossing. Hope Grant, in 



3 54 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

command of the cavalry, covered their front, and 
drove back the enemy's horse. 

The Queen's Bays, a young regiment that had 
never yet been engaged, were in the advance. They 
got out of hand in their ardour, and rode recklessly 
on a body of Sepoy horse, smashed them with their 
charge, followed them over -eagerly into broken 
ground, and under heavy gun-fire. They came back 
broken from that Wild charge, their major, Percy 
Smith, was killed, and the Bays themselves suffered 
badly. 

Outram, meanwhile, had got round what we have 
called the "toe" of the boot, and, swinging to the 
left, followed the curve of the- river bank till a point 
was reached which took the first line of the Sepoy 
defences beyond the river in reverse. Twenty- two 
heavy guns had been brought, by this time, across 
the river, and sites were chosen for two powerful 
batteries. Nicholson, of the Engineers, tells how 
he rode with Outram to the river bank, to choose 
the position of the first battery. "Got close," he 
writes, "to the end of the enemy's lines, and found 
we could see into the rear of these works. Poor 
creatures ! They have not a grain of sense. They 
have thrown up the most tremendous works, and 
they are absolutely useless." A stroke of clever 
generalship, in a word, had turned the Sepoy lines 
into mere paper screens. 

A building, called the Chaker Kothi, or Yellow 



THE STORMING OF LUCKNOW 35 5 

House, had to be carried, as it commanded the site of 
one of the batteries. Most of the Sepoys holding the 
building fled when the British attacking party came 
on, but nine of them stubbornly clung to their post, 
and they fired so fast, and with so deadly an aim., 
that they shot down more than their own number 
before the position was carried. It was only, indeed, 
by firing salvos from a troop of horse artillery that 
this stubborn little garrison was driven out of the 
building at last. Then, from the summit of the 
Yellow House, a three-storey building, a flag — one of 
the colours of the Bengal Fusileers — was set up, a 
signal to the British left wing that Outram's batteries 
were in position. 

On the morning of the 9th, Outram's guns opened 
on the first line of the Sepoy defences, that to which 
the canal served as a wet ditch, with a fire that swept 
it from flank to flank. Campbell was pouring the 
fire of Peel's guns upon the Martinere, which served 
as a sort of outwork to the long canal-rampart, and 
at two o'clock the Highland regiments — the 42nd 
leading, the 93rd in support — were launched on the 
enemy's position. The men of the 93rd were too 
impatient to be content with "supporting" the 42nd, 
and the two regiments raced down the slope side 
by side. Earthworks, trenches, rifle-pits were leaped 
or clambered over, and almost in a moment the 
Sepoys were in wild flight across the canal. The 
Highlanders, with the 4th Punjaub Rifles, followed 



3 56 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

them eagerly, and broke tlirough the enemy's first 
line. 

Outram's first battery, as we have said, was SAveep- 
ing this hne with a cruel flank fire. The Sepoys 
had been driven from their guns in the batteries 
that abutted on the river, and they seemed to be 
deserted. Adrian Hope's men were attacking, at 
that moment, the farther, or southern, end of the 
line ; and Butler, of the ist Bengal Fusileers, with 
four privates, ran down to the bank of the river 
and tried to attract the attention of the British 
left, some third of a mile distant ; but in vain. The 
river was sixty yards wide, the current ran sAviftly, 
the farther bank was held by Sepoy batteries ; and 
though no Sepoys could be seen, yet it might Avell 
be that scores were crouchinof under its shelter. 
Butler, however, with the ready daring of youth, 
threw off his coat and boots, scrambled down the 
river bank, plunged into the stream and swam 
across it. He climbed up the farther bank, mounted 
the parapet of the abandoned work, and, standing 
there, waved his arms to the distant Highlanders. 
It Avas not a very heroic figure ! His wet uniform 
clung to his limbs, the water was running down hair 
and face. The Sepoys nigh at hand, opened a sharp 
fire upon him. But still that damp figure stood 
erect and cool, showing clear against the sky-line. 

Butler was seen from the British left, and the 
meaning of his gestures understood ; but a staff 



THE STORMING OF LUCKNOW 3 57 

officer, with more punctiliousness tlian common 
sense, objected to the troops moving along the line 
till orders had been received to that effect. So a 
brief delay occurred. Still that damp figure stood 
aloft, shot at from many points, but vehemently 
signalling. Now the Highlanders and Sikhs came 
eagerly on, and Butler, having handed over to them 
the battery which, wet and unarmed, he had cap- 
tured, scrambled down into the river, and sAvam 
back to rejoin his regiment. It was a gallant 
feat, and the Victoria Cross, which rewarded it, was 
well earned. 

That nig^ht the British were content with holding 
the enemy's first line. On the loth Campbell, who, 
for all his hot Scottish temper, was the wariest and 
most deliberate of generals, was content Avith pushing 
Outram's batteries still farther up the north bank, 
so as to command the Mess-house and the Begum's 
Palace. On the left, the building known as Banks' 
House was battered with artillery, and carried. The 
two blades of the scissors, in a word, had been thrust 
far up into the city, and now they were to be closed ! 
Betwixt the positions held to the right and to the left, 
stood the great mass of buildings known as the Begum 
Kothi, the Begum's Palace. This was strongly held, 
and the fight which carried it was the most stubborn 
and bloody of the Avhole operations of the siege. 

The guns played fiercely upon it for hours ; by 
the middle of the afternoon a slight breach had 



3 58 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

been effected, and it was resolved to assault. Forbes- 
Mitchell says that the men of the 93rd Avere finish- 
ing their dinner when they noticed a stir amongst 
the staff officers. The brigadiers were putting their 
heads together. Suddenly the order was given for 
the 93rd to " fall in." " This was quietly done, 
the officers taking their places, the men tighten- 
ing their belts, and pressing their bonnets firmly 
on their heads, loosening the ammunition in their 
pouches, and seeing that the springs of their bayonets 
held tight." A few seconds were spent in these 
grim preparations, then came the sharp word of 
command that stiffened the whole regiment into 
an attitude of silent eagerness. The Begum's Palace 
was to be rushed. 

It was a block of buildings of vast size and 
strength. The breach was little more than a scratch 
in the wall of the gateway, which it needed the 
activity of a goat to climb, and which only British 
soldiers, daringly led, would have undertaken to 
assault in the teeth of a numerous enemy. And 
there were nearly 5000 Sepoys within that tangle 
of courts ! The storming party consisted of the 
93rd and the 4th Punjaub Rifles, led by Adrian 
Hope. The 93rd led, the Punjaubees were in sup- 
port, and the rush was fierce and daring. It is said 
that the adjutant of the 93rd, McBean, cut down 
with his own sword no less than eleven of the 
enemy, in forcing his way through the breach ; 



THE STORMING OF LUCKNOW 359 

and he won the Victoria Cross by his performance. 
He was an Inverness ploughman when he enHsted 
in the 93rd, and he rose through all its ranks until 
he commanded the regiment. 

Captain M'Donald was shot dead while leading his 
men. His senior lieutenant took the company on, 
until the charging crowd was stopped by a ditch 
eighteen feet wide, and from twelve to fourteen feet 
deep. The stormers leaped, with hardly a pause, into 
the ditch, but it seemed impossible to climb up the 
farther bank. Wood, of the Grenadier company, how- 
ever, clambered on the shoulders of a tall private, 
and, claymore in hand, mounted the farther side. 
The spectacle of a Highland bonnet and menacing 
claymore, making its appearance above the ditch, 
proved too much for the Sepoys. They fled, and 
Wood pulled up man after man by the muzzle of 
his rifle — the rifles, it may be mentioned as an in- 
teresting detail, were all loaded, and on full cock ! 
Highlanders and Punjaubees, racing side by side, had 
now broken into the great palace. Every doorway 
was barred and loopholed, and the Sepoys fought 
desperately; but the Highlanders, with the Punjau- 
bees in generous rivalry, broke through barrier after 
barrier, till they reached the inner square, filled with 
a mass of Sepoys. " The word," Forbes-Mitchell says, 
was " keep well together, men, and use the bayonet," 
and that order was diligently obeyed. The combat 
raged for over two hours, the pipe-major of the 93rd 



36o THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

blowing liis pipes slirilly during the whole time. " I 
knew," he said afterwards, " our boys would fight all 
the better while they heard the bagpipes." When 
the main fight was over, in the inner court of the 
Begum's Palace, alone, over 860 of the enemy lay 
dead. Colin Campbell himself described it as "the 
sternest struggle which occurred during the siege." 

That most gallant, but ill-fated soldier, Adrian 
Hope, personally led one of the storming parties. It 
is said that he got in through a window, up to which 
he was lifted, and through which he was pushed by 
his men. He was sent headlong and sprawling upon 
a group of Sepoys in the dark room inside. That 
apparition of the huge, red-headed Celt tumbling 
upon them, sword and pistol in hand, was too much 
for the Sepoys, and they fled without striking a blow ! 

Perhaps the most gallant soldier that perished 
within the blood-splashed courts of Begum Kothi 
was Hodson, of " Hodson's Horse." Robert Napier 
tells the story of how, when he was in the act of 
reconnoitring the breach, he found Hodson suddenly 
standing beside him, and saying, laughingly, " I am 
come to take care of you." The two watched the 
rush of the stormers up the breach, and listened 
to the sound of the fierce tumult within the walls. 
Presently, arm - in - arm, they quietly climbed the 
breach, and found the last embers of the conflict still 
spluttering within. Napier was called away by some 
duty and Hodson went forward alone. 



THE STORMING OF LUCKNOW 36 1 

At the back of the mosque ran a narrow lane, 
bordered by rooms in which many of the flying 
Sepoys had found shelter. Forbes- Mitchell says 
they had broken open the door of one of these rooms, 
and saw it was crowded with Sepoys. He placed 
some of his party on each side of the door, and sent 
back two men to the breach to get a few bags of gun- 
powder, with slow matches flxed, intending to light 
one of these and fling it into the room, by Wiiy of 
summarily clearing out the Sepoys. At that moment 
Hodson came quickly up, sword in hand, "Where 
are the rebels ? " he demanded grimly. Forbes- 
Mitchell's narrative runs : " I pointed to the door of 
the room, and Hodson, shouting, ' Come on,' was about 
to rush in. I implored him not to do so, saying 
' It's certain death ; wait for the powder ; I've sent 
men for powder-bags.' Hodson made a step forward, 
and I put out my hand to seize him by the shoulder 
to pull him out of the line of the doorway, when he 
fell back, shot through the chest. He gasped out a 
few words, either, ' Oh, my wife,' or ' Oh, my mother ' 
— I cannot now rightly remember — but was im- 
mediately choked by blood." 

Colonel Gordon-Alexander, who took part in the 
assault, and saw Hodson come on the scene, gives a 
similar account of the manner in which Hodson 
received his wound; but it illustrates the unrelia- 
bility of human testimony to notice how he and 
Forbes-Mitchell, who were both actors in the tragedy, 



362 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

flatly contradict each other from this point. Gordon- 
Alexander says that a man of his company, whom he 
had sent over to warn Hodson, " never stopped, but 
ran in at the door and pinned the man who had shot 
Hodson, with his bayonet, before he had time to 
reload. There was only one other Sepoy in the 
doorway, and he was bayoneted, too." Forbes-Mitchell 
says that after Hodson had been carried off, the bags 
of poAvder, with slow matches in them, were brought 
up. " These we lit, and then pitched the bags in 
through the door. Two or three bags very soon 
brought the enemy out, and they were bayoneted. 
One of the 93rd, a man named Rule," rushed in 
among the rebels, using both bayonet and butt of his 
rifle, shouting, ' Revenge for Hodson ! ' and he killed 
more than half the men single-handed." But, ac- 
cording to Gordon- Alexander, there were only two 
Sepoys in the room, and no powder-bags were neces- 
sary to drive them out ! 

Hodson was a soldier of real genius, but was pur- 
sued through life, and to his very grave, by a swarm 
of baseless calumnies. When he was buried, Colin 
Campbell himself stood by the grave, and, as the 
cofiin of the dead soldier sank from sight, the British 
commander-in-chief burst into tears. Those tears, 
rolling down the cheeks of so great and fine a soldier, 
are Hodson's best vindication and memorial. 

Meanwhile, some other formidable buildings — the 
Secundrabagh, the Shah Nujeef, &c. — had fallen, 



THE STORMING OF LUCKNOW 363 

almost without resistance, into the hands of the 
British. Oiitram was steadily pushing on along the 
northern bank, and scourging with his flank fire each 
position the Sepoys held. The 12th and the 13th 
were employed by the engineers in pushing on a line 
of advance through the houses, to the left of the 
main road, thus avoiding the fire of the Sepoys. On 
the morning of the 14th the Imambarah, a mass 
of minarets, flat roofs, and lono- ornamental frontaa:e, 
was stormed by Brasyer's Sikhs. Outram, by this 
time, had seized the iron bridge to the west of the 
Residency. He was in a position to cork the neck 
of the bottle, that is, and to make flight impossible 
for the great mass of the Sepoys. But this splendid 
position was thrown away by the first of the two 
great blunders which mar Colin Campbell's conduct 
of the siege. 

Outram asked permission to force the bridge, and 
take the Sepoys, still holding the Kaisarbagh and 
the Residency, in the rear. Campbell consented, but 
forbade him crossing, if, in the process, he would lose 
a single man. Now, the bridge was held in force by 
the Sepoys, and guarded by a battery, and to force 
it would necessarily risk many lives. But war is a 
business of risks, and the gain beyond was enormous. 
A soldier like Nicholson, or Neill, or Hodson, would 
have interpreted Campbell's order generously ; or 
they would have stormed the bridge without orders, 
and would have trusted to the justification which 



364 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

success always gives. But Outram was of a less 
audacious type. An order, to him, was sacrosanct 
He made no attempt to cross the bridge, but looked 
on, while the defeated Sepoys streamed past in 
thousands, escaping to the open country, there to 
kindle the fires of a costly guerilla warfare. 

The preparations to pass the bridge, it may be 
added, were marked by fine valour on the part of 
one of Outram's engineers. Outram himself had, at 
the beginning of the operations, thrown a barricade 
across the bridge, to prevent the Sepoys crossing. 
When, in turn, he himself had to force his way 
across, it was necessary to remove this barricade, and 
to do it in broad daylight, and under a fierce and 
sustained fire from the Sepoys. Wynne, of the 
Enofineers, and a sergeant named Paul, undertook 
the perilous task. They crept • forward, crouching 
under the parapet of the bridge ; then, kneeling 
down, they removed one sand-bag after another from 
the barricade, passing each bag back along the line of 
men, from hand to hand. But, as the level of the 
barricade sank, the two gallant engineers were ex- 
posed more fully to the Sepoy muskets. The fire 
was furious. Yet Wj^nne and his companion coolly 
pulled down the barricade, bag by bag, till the lowest 
tier was reached, and then ran back unharmed. 

Meanwhile, events elsewhere had moved too fast 
for the British commander-in-chief Brasyer's Sikhs, 
with some companies of the loth Foot, had stormed 



THE STORMINTG OF LUCKNOW 365 

the Imambarah. The flying Sepoys took refuge in 
the next and strongest of all the Sepoy works, the 
citadel of the whole defence, the Kaisarbagh, a blaze 
of gilded spires, cupolas and domes, all turned into 
a vast fortification. The Sikhs and the loth followed 
vehemently and closely, while some of the men of 
the 90th, led by young Havelock, carried a palace 
close to the Kaisarbagh, from which they commanded 
three of its bastions. They opened on them a fire 
so deadly that the Sepoys fled from their guns. The 
engineers wished to stay any further attack ; the pro- 
gramme for the day was exhausted, and, in Colin 
Campbell's leisurely tactics, nothing further was 
meant to be done that day. 

But the stormers were eager; Sikhs and High- 
landers alike had the fire of victory in their blood. 
They clambered through an embrasure, and forced 
their way into the Kaisarbagh, Havelock running 
back and bringing up some companies of the loth 
Foot. Brasyer pushed out beyond the Kaisarbagh, 
indeed, to the Mess - house. Franks and Napier 
brought up new troops, and the Kaisarbagh itself 
was swept from end to end. 

All the wealth of India seemed to have been 
gathered within that great mass of gilded walls, and 
all this was now given up to mad and wasteful 
plunder. The men, to use Russell's phrase, were 
" drunk with plunder." They literally waded through 
court after court, piled high with embroidered cloths, 



Z66 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

gold and silver brocade, arms rough with jewels, 
shawls heavy with gold, banners, cloaks, pictures, 
vases. The men had the wealth of kings under their 
feet! 

It was a day of great deeds. Two successive lines 
of defensive works, vast as railway embankments, 
garrisoned by an army, and backed by a great 
citadel, had been carried in succession. And yet the 
chief military gain of this great feat was lost, owing 
to Colin Campbell's absurd order, which held Outram 
back from carrying the iron bridge, and enabled the 
flying Sepoys to escape in thousands, to relight the 
flame of war throughout the whole of Glide. 

It is amusing to know that Colin Campbell was 
at first disgusted, rather than delighted, with the 
daring rush which, with such indecent and unscien- 
tific haste, carried the Kaisarbagh. He is said, 
indeed, to have sent orders to Franks to evacuate 
the great post. Franks, however, was both a fine 
soldier and a hot-blooded Irishman, and he declined, 
in the bluntest form of speech, to give up the great 
stronghold his men had carried with a dash so 
brilliant. 

Campbell's imagination, it seems, was haunted by 
the sense that each Sepoy position, when it was 
carried, was an abandoned powder-magazine, packed 
thick with the possibilities of dreadful explosions. 
And facts justified that uncomfortable belief. The 
story of one such fatal explosion may be briefly told. 



THE STORMING OF LUCKNOW 367 

In the Jumma Miisjid no less than nme cart-loads 
of gunpowder were discovered. The powder was 
packed in tin cases, and it was resolved to destroy 
it by flinging the cases down a well. A line of men 
was formed, and the cases passed quickly from hand 
to hand. The first case flung down struck against 
the side of the well, and exploded. The flame ran 
from case to case along the whole line till it reached 
the carts. The cases in the very hands of the men 
exploded, the nine cart-loads went off in one terrific 
blast of flame and sound, and, with one exception, 
the whole party — numbering twenty-two men, with 
two engineer officers in command — was killed. The 
only man who escaped was the one that threw that 
fatal first case down the well ! 

When the Kaisarbagh and the Mess-house fell, 
and the third line of Sepoy defences was thus 
carried, Lucknow was practically in the British 
power. But on the next day, March 15, Colin Camp- 
bell, wary and war-wise soldier though he was, com- 
mitted a second blunder, which helped to rob the 
success of some of its best fruits. He realised the 
blunder he committed when he held back Outram, 
and to remedy it he perpetrated a further mistake. 
He despatched his two cavalry brigades in pursuit 
of the flying Sepoys, and despatched them on the 
wrong roads. The absence of the cavalry created a 
husre gap in the British lines on the north of the 



"■fe^ & 



ap 



Goomtee, and a great body of Sepoys, said to be more 



368 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

than 20,000 strong, escaped through it unharmed. 
" In this way," says Lord Roberts, " the campaign, 
which should then have come to an end, was pro- 
tracted for nearly a year by the fugitives spreading 
themselves over Oude, and occupying forts and other 
strong positions, from which they were able to offer 
resistance to our troops till the end of May 1859; 
thus causing needless loss of thousands of British 
soldiers." That is a severe condemnation to be 
written by one great soldier on another. 

Brigadier Campbell, with a strong body of horse 
and guns, hovered outside the Musabagh, ready to 
cut up the Sepoys when Outram had" driven them 
out of that building. For some mysterious reason, 
and to the open disgust of the whole British army, 
he failed to cut up the flying Sepoys. It was, for his 
command, a day of inertness and failure ; yet it was 
lit up by one splendid dash of personal daring. A 
small mud fort covered, at one point, the road along 
which the Sepoys were flying, and Campbell sent 
forward a party of cavalry — a troop of the 7th 
Hussars and a squadron of Hodson's Horse, with two 
guns — to clear the Sepoys out of it. The guns flung 
a couple of shells over the walls of the fort, and it 
had the effect of a match flung into a beehive ! The 
bees flew out, eager to sting! Some fifty rebels, 
headed by the village chief, a giant in size, suddenly 
rushed from the gate of the fort on the guns. They 
were upon the Hussars before they could be put in 



THE STORMING OF LUCKNOW 369 

motion to charge, and the three troop officers were 
in an instant struck clown. A ckister of the Sepoys 
bent over one of the three, Banks, slashing and 
thrusting at him, when Hegart, in command of the 
Hussars, rode single-handed to his rescue. 

He broke through the group, shooting right and 
left with his revolver, wheeled and dashed through 
them again. He had shot three, and knocked over a 
fourth with the hilt of his sword, when two Sikhs 
galloped up to his aid, and Banks was saved, only to 
die of his wounds a few days later. When Hegart 
emerged from the fight everything he had about 
him, says Hope Grant, bore traces of his gallant 
struggle. His saddle and his horse were marked 
with sword-slashes, his SAvord-hilt was dinted, his 
'martingale was cut, the silk pocket handkerchief 
with which his sword was tied to his wrist was 
severed as cleanly as with a razor. 

The capture of Lucknow, in a space of time so 

brief, and at a cost so slight, was due in part, of 

course, to the splendid leadership of the officers and 

the daring of the men. But it was due, in even 

greater measure, to the skill of the engineers. It 

was an engineer's plan that sent Outram, with his 

heavy guns, across the Goomtee, round the " toe " of 

the boot, and so took the lines of the Sepoys in 

reverse. It was clever engineering, again, which 

broke a way for the advance of the British left wing 

through the houses to the left of the great road. 

2 A 



370 THE TALE OF THE GREAT MUTINY 

The Sepoys had taken it for granted that the 
advance of the British would be up that road, and 
they had turned it into a Valley of Death. Every 
parapeted housetop that looked down on the road 
was crowded with muskets. The road itself was 
merely a double line of crenellated walls, inaccessible 
to scaling ladders, swept by grape and case-shot from 
every cross street, pelted by musketry from every 
mosque roof and palace gable, and raked from end to 
end with the fire of great guns. But all these elabo- 
rate and terrible defences were made useless by the 
fact that the British engineers tore a road for their 
advance through the houses to the left of the great 
road, until the Kaisarbagh itself was reached and 
seized. The whole siege, indeed, is a lesson in the 
value of science in war. Brains count for more, in 
such a struggle, than even bullets. 

The Residency itself fell with almost ludicrous 
tameness. Outram, on the i6th, forced his way 
across the Iron Bridge, and the Residency, though 
crowded with Sepoys, was yielded with scarcely a 
musket shot being fired in defence. The position 
which the Sepoys tried, in vain, for more than eighty 
days to carry, was taken by the British in less than 
as many minutes ! 

Lucknow did not fall, however, without one eccen- 
tric and highly illogical flash of valour being shown 
by the Sepoys, I'he Moulvie of Fyzabad was the 
most obstinate and daring of the leaders thrown up 




Walker & C ockerelUc. 



Map of 
NORTHERN INDIA 

showing distribution of troops on ist. May 1857. 




By permission, from Captain Trotter's Life of John Nicholson, John Murray 1898. 



VV.ilkcr&Cockcrcllic. 



THE STORMING OF LTTCKNOW 37 1 

by the great MutiDy. Ho was a soldier, indeed, who, 
on the Sepoys' side, rivals Tantia Topee himself for 
generalship ; while, for personal daring, he leaves the 
Nana's general hopelessly behind. The Moiilvie had 
made his escape from Lucknow, but in a mood of 
sudden wrath, turned his face towards the city again. 
He returned, and occupied a strong building, from 
which he was only expelled with much hard fighting 
by the 93rd and the 4th Punjaub Infantry. The 
fight was hopeless from the outset ; the city had 
fallen, further resistance was a mere idle waste of 
life. Yet the Sepoys showed a more desperate 
courage in this combat than at any other point 
throughout the siege. For so much does the in- 
fluence of one brave man count ! 



INDEX 



Abbott, Major, 37 et seq. 
Adye, 247 
Agra, 17G 

Aikmaii, Lieutenant, 331, 332 
Aitken, Lieutenant, 163, 207, 234 
Ajmeer Gate, Delhi, 317 
Alexander, 6G, 67 
Alison, 241, 251, 254, 256 
Allahabad, 108, 125, 254 ; revolt, 

65 ; mutineers march to Delhi, 

66 ; treasury plundered, 69 ; 
Neill arrives from Benares at, 
70, 75 ; retribution, 77 

Alumbagh, 7, 236, 240 ; storming 

of the, 194 ; Outram holds the, 

349, 350 
Anderson, Captain, 164, 171 

, Major, 182 

Ansou, General, 210, 272 ; his 

death, 273 

, Major, 236 

Aong, village of, 130 

Arnold, Captain, 200, 208 

Arrah, 7 

Arrapore, 126 

Ashe, Lieutenant, 98 et scq., 

118 
Attock, 7'irer, 295 
Azimoolah (Nana Sahib's Prime 

Minister), 88 

Bahadur, Jung, 350 



Bailey Guard Gate, Lucknow, 
162, 163, 185, 202, 204, 234 

Balaclava, 317 

Bala Rao (the Nana's general). 
188, 141 

Banks, Major, 148 ; succeeds Sir 
H. Lawrence at Lucknow, 169; 
his death, 181 

Banks, Mr., 369 

Barnard, Sir Henry, 38, 265, 281, 
343; succeeds to the chief com- 
mand in India, 273 ; gains the 
Ridge at Delhi, 274 ; reinforced 
by Daly with the Guides, 278 ; 
illness, 282 ; his death, 287 

Barrackpore revolt, 1 

Barrow, 125, 195, 350 

Battye, Quentin, 279, 280 

Baugh, Lieutenant, 1 

Beatson, Stuart, 125, 128 

Becher, John, 296 

Beebeeghur at Cawnpore, mas- 
sacre in the, 139 et sfq. ; in- 
scription on the site of the, 147 

Begum's Palace, Lucknow, 357, 
358, 360 

Belinda, 126 

Beloochees, the, 297 

Benares, outbreak at, 67 ; Neill 
arrives at, 72 ; mutineers pun- 
ished, 74 

Bertrand, Father, 309 



374 



INDEX 



Birch, Captain, 173, 184 
Bithoor, palace of, 191 

road, 261 

Blunt, Major, 219 

"Bob the Nailer," 174 

Bourchier, Captain, 260 

Bowden, 117 

Branston, Major, 230 

Brasyer, Lieutenant, 68 et scq. ; 

at the storming of Lucknow, 

350, 363, 364 
Brendish, 52 
Brind, Colonel, 304 
Buckley, Conductor, 41 et scq. 
Bukr, Abool, 46 
Bunnee Bridge, 240 
Buntera, 211 
Burgess, Corporal, 313 
Burn Bastion, at Delhi, 317 ; caii- 

ture of, 329 et seq. 
Burton, Major, 79 et seq. 
Bussarat Gunj, battles at, 188, 

191 
Butler, Lieutenant, at the assault 

on Delhi, 318, 319 ; at the 

storming of Lucknow, 356, 357 

Cabul, 301 

Cabul Gate at Delhi, 316, 322, 
330 

Calcutta, 72, 86, 124, 191, 238, 
260 

Calpee Road, Cawnpore, 245, 246, 
254, 2G0 

Campbell, Brigadier, 868 

Campbell, Colonel, 302 et scq. 

, Sir Colin, 21, 346 ; Luck- 
now and Sir Colin Campbell, 
208-23G ; receives the chief 
command in India, 210; ad- 
vances to the relief of Luck- 
now, 214 ; in communication 
with the garrison, 218 ; storm- 



ing the Secundrabagh, 220 ; 
assault of the Shah Nujeef, 
229 ; capture of the Mess-house, 
233 ; relieves Lucknow, 234 ; 
meeting with Outram and 
Havelock, 234 ; at Havelock's 
funeral, 236 ; the retreat to 
Cawnpore, 240 et seq. ; defeats 
Nana Sahib and the Gwalior 
contingent, 260 ; on the recap- 
ture of Lucknow, 346, 347 ; 
holds the Alumbagh, 349, 350 ; 
the storming of Lucknow, 
352-371 ; at Hodson's funeral, 
362- 

Campbell, Sir George, 48, 78 

Canning, Lord, 66, 73, 294 ; on 
Lord Lawrence, 270 ; decides 
to retain Peshavvur, 272 ; on 
the recapture of Lucknow, 347, 
350 ■ 

, Lady, 116, 124, 237 

Captan Bazaar, 162 

Carmichael, Sergeant, 313 

Carthew, M., 251 

Case, Colonel, 158 

, Mrs., 159 

Cashmere Gate, Delhi, 36, 265, 
278, 281, 307 et seq. ; the mas- 
sacre at the, 39 ; the Bastion 
of the, 305, 306 

Cavanagh, Paddy, 188 

Cave-Browne, the Reverend, 64, 
342 

Cawnpore, massacre of refugees 
from Futteghur, 59 

The Siege, 84-110; Wheeler's 

reassuring telegram to Calcutta, 
86; Nana Sahib receives charge 
of the Treasury, 86 ; Wheeler 
returns reinforcements sent 
from Lucknow, 88 ; bad posi- 
tion chosen for defence, 88 ; 



INDEX 



375 



the outbreak, 90 ; iriiitineers 
start for Delhi, 91 ; recalled 
by Nana Sahib, 92 ; Wheeler's 
entrenchments attacked, 93 ; 
the two wells, 95, 105; hos- 
pital barrack takes fire, 103 ; 
Wheeler appeals to Lawrence, 
lOG ; Nana Sahib offers terms 
of surrender, 108 ; capitulation 
of the garrison arranged, 109 ; 
the Nana's general organises 
the massacre, 110 

Cawnpore, the Murder Ghaut, 111- 
147 ; official evidence of the mas- 
sacre, 114 ; escape of one of the 
boats, 116 ; survivors confined 
in the Savada-house, 116 ; re- 
lief force organised at Calcutta, 
123 ; Havelock's advance on 
Cawnpore and defeat of the 
Nana, 132 et seq. ; massacre of 
the captives in the Beebeeghur, 
143 ; memorial to the victims, 
147 

Havelock with the Lucknow 

relief column retires on, 190 ; 
Sir Colin Campbell's retreat 
from Lucknow to, 240 ; Wind- 
ham commands at, 243 ; en- 
gages Tantia Topee, 245; defeat 
of the Nana by Sir Colin Camp- 
bell at, 260 

Chaker Kothi (Yellow House) at 
Lucknow, 354, 355 

Chamberlain, Major Neville, 53, 
268 ; commands the movable 
column, 54, 269 ; discovers a 
plot at Peshawur, 55 ; on the 
Ridge at Delhi, 286, 301 ; at 
the storming of Delhi, 327 

Chandin Chouk at Delhi, 316 

Charbagh Bridge, 196, 198 

Cheek, Ensign Arthur, 70 



Chinhut, battle of, 153, 156, 176 
Chutter Munzil Palace, 202 
Clarke, Lieutenant, 32 
Clery, Lieutenant, 164 
Clyde, Lord, 7, 147 
" Cock of the North," the, 233 
Cooney, Private, 173 
Cooper, Ensign, 222 
Copenhagen, battle of, 349 
Corbett, General, 56 
Craigie, Lieutenant, 32 
Crowe, Conductor, 41 et seq. 

Dalhousie, Lord, 12, 16, 108 

Daly, Captain, with the Guides at 
Delhi, 278, 280, 284 

Dawson, Captain, 232 

Delafosse, Lieutenant, 99, 117, 
119, 121 

Delhi, 34-64; description of, 34; 
mutineers arrive from Meerut, 
35, 265 ; massacre at the Cash- 
mere Gate, 36 et seq. ; flight of 
survivors to Meerut, 40 ; de- 
fence and explosion of the great 
magazine, 40 et seq. ; Allaha- 
bad mutineers march to, 66 

• How the Ridge was held, 7, 

9, 263-304 ; Sir Henry Barnard 
gains the Ridge, 265 ; arrival 
of Nicholson with the movable 
column, 272, 293 et seq. ; rein- 
forced by Daly with the Guides, 
278 ; plan to storm the city, 
281 ; attacks by the Sepoys, 
283 et seq.; the battering-train 
arrives and the siege begins, 
303 

The leap on the city, 305- 

330; examining the breaches> 
305 ; the great assault, 307 et 
seq.; inside the city, 316; the 
fall of Delhi, 329 



376 



INDEX 



Delhi, retribution, 331-345 ; cap- 
ture of the king's palace, 332 ; 
the king made prisoner by 
Hodson, 334 ; Hodson shoots 
the three princes, 338-342 

Bank, 36, 330 

Gazette, 36 

King of, 19, 34, 42, 383, 334 

Dewan-i-khas, Delhi Palace, 333 

Dilkusha Bridge, Lucknow, 351, 
352 

Park, Lucknow, 214 

Dinapore, 189 

Dobbin, Sergeant, 222 

Donnelly, Lance- Corporal, 223 

Doondoo Punth. See under Nana 
Sahib 

Dost Mohammed, 271 

Drelincourt's "Preparation for 
Death," 146 

East India Company, 345 

Edwardes, Sir Herbert, 10, 52, 
53, 55, 268, 294, 296 ; opposes 
the abandonment of Peshawur, 
271 

Edwards, Sergeant, 41 

Elbe, river, 271 

Ewart, Colonel (34th Native In- 
fantry), 112 

Mrs., 112 

Colonel (93rd Highlanders), 

at the storming of the Secun- 
drabagh, 224 et seq. 

Eyre, Vincent, 192, 195, 350 

Farquhar, 50 

Fayrer, Sir Joseph, 51 ; his bro- 
ther's death, 52 ; at Lucknow, 
154, 159, 174, 178 ; at Chinhut, 
157 ; attends Sir Henry Law- 
rence, 169 

Finnis, Colonel, 26, 46, 49 



Fischer, Colonel, 51 

Fisher, Mr., 61 

Mrs., 61 

Flagstaff Tower at Delhi, 38, 276, 
283 

Forbes, Archibald, 68, 125, 145, 
187, 188, 195, 202, 203, 223 

Forbes-Mitchell, 78 ; with Sir 
Colin Campbell's relief force, 
212 ; at the storming of the 
Secundrabagh, 220 et seq.; in 
the assault on the Shah Nujeef, 
229 et seq. ; at the battle of 
Cawnpore, 240, 257 ; at the 
recapture of Lucknow, 352- 
362 

Forest, Lienten.ant, 38, 41, 43 

Franks, Brigadier-General, 365, 
366 

Friend of India, 124 

Fulton, Captain, garrison engineer 
at Lucknow, 182 ; his journal 
quoted, 182-184 

Mr., of Melbourne, 182 

Futteghur, civilians take flight, 

59 ; their murder at Cawnpore, 

60 ; the revolt at, 60 
Futtehpore outbreak, 78 ; Tucker's 

defence, 79, 126 ; battle of, 128 
Fyzabad, Moulvie of, 370, 371 

Gabbett, 298 

Ganges, river, 65, 75, 85, 114, 120, 

125, 185, 192, 239, 240, 253 
Germon, Captain, 164 
Glandell, 203 

Glanville, Lieutenant, 100, 117 
Goldie, Colonel, 139 

General, 59 

Gonne, 51 

Goomtee, river, 162, 196, 216, 

232, 348 et seq. 
Gordon, 329 



INDEX 



■177 



Gordon- Alexander, Colonel, 361, 

362 
Goulburn Gaol, Governor of, 232 
Government House, Calcutta, 

238 
Grant, Sir Hope, at the Secun- 
drabagh, 222 ; with Sir Colin 
Campbell at Cawnpore, 260, 
261 ; on the Ridge at Delhi, 
274, 282, 284 ; at the storming 
of Delhi, 314, 315, 332 ; inter- 
views the King of Delhi, 336, 
337 ; at the recapture of Luck- 
now, 351, 353, 369 
Grant, Sir Patrick, 123 
Graves, Brigadier, 38 
Graydoii, 51 
Graj'don, Colonel, 321 
Greased cartridges, 13, 14 
Greathed, W., 255; at Delhi, 

305, 311 
Greenawaj', 140 
Greville, Captain, 292, 319 
Gubbins, Judge Frederick, 73 
, Mr., Financial Commis- 
sioner at Luckuow, 51, 154, 
164, 179, 181, 182 
Gwalior contingent, 239, 244 et 
seq. ; crushed by Sir Colin 
Campbell, 260 

Hamilton, Colonel, 125, 187, 192 

Harding, Captain, 164 

Hardinge, Lord, 124 

Hare, A. J. C, "The Story of 
Two Noble Lives," 237 

Harrison, leading seaman, 230 

Harrison, Lieutenant, 118 

Harward, Lieutenant, 66 

Hastings, 201 

Havelock, Sir Henry, 7, 21, 294, 
323, 347 ; commands Cawn- 
pore relief force, 123 ; defeats 



the Nana's troops at Futteh- 
pore, 128 ; advance on Cawn- 
pore, 132-137 ; bravery of his 
son, 135, 200 ; Lucknow and 
Havelock, 184-208 ; marches 
to the relief of Lucknow, 187 ; 
village of Onao carried, 187 ; 
enemy routed at Bussarat Gun j, 
188 ; retires to Cawnpore, 190 ; 
the quarrel with General Neill, 

190 ; asks for reinforcements, 

191 ; destruction of the Nana's 
palace, 191 ; second start for 
Lucknow, 192 ; retribution, 
193 ; the Alumbagh carried, 
195 ; relieves Lucknow, 205 ; 
meeting with Sir Colin Camp- 
bell, 234 ; his death and funeral, 
236 ; reminiscence by Lady 
Canning, 238 

Havelock, H. (the younger), in the 
advance on Cawnpore, 135, 
136 ; with the Lucknow relief 
force, 200, 236 ; at the recap- 
ture of Luckuow, 3G5 

Hay, Captain, 321 

Hazara, 324 

Hearsey, General, 5 

Hegart, , 369 

Henderson, Ensign, 100 

Hewitt, General, 24, 30 

Hills, Lieutenant, V.C, 288-290 

Hindu Rao's house, 277 ct seq. 

Hodson, W. (of Hodson's Horse), 
22, 282, 292, 345, 349, 363 ; at 
Delhi, 279 et seq. ; at the storm- 
ing of Delhi, 314, 315 ; captures 
the King of Delhi, 334-336; 
seizes and shoots the three 
princes, 46, 338-342 ; death at 
the recapture of Lucknow, 360- 
362 

Dr., 207 



378 



INDEX 



Home, Lieutenant, 305, 312 
Hope, Adrian, with Sir Colin 
Campbell at Lucknow, 236 ; at 
the battle of Cawnpore, 255 ; at 
the recapture of Lucknow, 356, 
358, 360 
Hopkins, Captain, 233 
Humayon's Tomb, 334, 338 
Hutchinson, George, 183 

Imambarah at Lucknow, 363, 365 
Indian Mutiny, outbreak at Bar- 
rackpore, 1 ; causes of the, 8 et 
seq. ; greased cartridges, 13 ; 
chupatties, 17 ; conspiracy for 
simultaneous revolt, 18, 47 ; 
revolt at Meerut, 23 

Delhi, 34-64 ; defence and 

explosion of the great magazine, 
40 et seq. ; how the Ridge was 
held, 263-304; the leap on 
the city, 305-330 ; the great 
assault, 307 et seq. ; the fall of 
the city, 329 ; retribution, 331- 
345 ; the king a prisoner, 334 ; 
the three princes shot, 328 et 
seq. 

estimated number of British 

troops available and of the 
Sepoy army, 48 ; officers' faith 
in their Sepoys, 50 ; the Pun- 
jaub saved, 52 ; doubtful regi- 
ments disarmed, formation of 
the Movable Column, 54 ; La- 
hore garrison disarmed, 56 ; 
Chamberlain disarms the garri- 
son at Multan, 62 ; outbreak at 
Allahabad, 65, 76 ; mutiny at 
Benares, 73 ; Tuttehpore, 78 ; 
Kotah, 79 

Cawnpore, the siege, 84- 

110 ; capitulation, 109 ; the 
Murder Ghaut, 111-147 ; Have- 



lock's advance on Cawnpore, 
132 ; Sir Colin Campbell defeats 
the Nana at, 260 
Indian Mutiny, Lucknow and Sir 
Henry Lawrence, 148-184 ; 
Chinhut disaster, 156 ; the siege 
begins, 167 ; death of Sir Henry 
Lawrence, 170 ; Lucknow and 
Havelock, 185-208 ; Havelock's 
march to the relief of, 187 et 
seq. ; his entry into, 205 ; Luck- 
now and Sir Colin Campbell, 
209-236; storming of the 
Secundrabagh, 220 ; assault on 
the Shah Nujeef, 229 ; Luck- 
now relieved, 234 ; the Sepoy 
in the open, 237-262 ; the 
retreat to Cawnpore, 240 et seq. 

the storming of Lucknow, 

345-371 ; Outram holds the 
Alumbagh, 349-350 ; death of 
Hodson, 360-362 ; the Kaisar- 
bagh carried, 365-367 ; the fall 
of city, 370 

Indus, river, 271 
Inglis, Colonel, 148, 160, 167, 
180, 255 

Lady, 159, 160, 172, 175, 

206 

Innes, 172, 177 
lunes's house, 162 

Jacob, Major, 319 
Jakes, Corporal, 200 
Jhansi, Ranee of, 8 
Jhelum, river, 295 
Jhind, Chief of, 9 
"Jim the Rifleman," 174 
Johannes' house, 174 
Jones, Mr., 176 

Brigadier, 307, 316, 325 

Colonel, 333 

Jones-Parry, 228, 235 



INDEX 



379 



Jullunder, 48 

JummaMusjid, 33 6, 324, 330, 367 

Jumna, rive?; 65, 276, 301 

Kaisarbagh (King's Palace) at 
Lucknow, 191, 234, 348 ct seq. 

Kandiel, 173 

Kavanagh, T. H., 214 ct seq. 

Kaye and Malleson's " History 
of the Mutiny," 8, 14, 16, 119, 
222, 233, 255, 261, 313, 321 

Kiernan, Sergeant Jolm, 198 

King's Palace, Delhi, 316, 331 

Kipling, Rudyard, " The Lost 
Legion," 64 

Knox, John, 266 

Kotah, 79 

Kotvvallee, Delhi, 342 

Kurnal, 273 

Kyber Pass, 301 

Lahore, 53 ; plot discovered, 56 ; 
garrison disarmed, 57 

Lahore Gate, Delhi, 281, 307 ct 
seq. 

Lake, Lord, 322 

Lamb, 315 

Lamont, Serg.-Maj. Alexander, 
197 

Lang, Lieutenant, 305, 329, 330 

Langmore, Lieutenant, 163 

Lawrence, Lieutenant, 163 

George, 79, 168 

Sir Henry, 16, 52 ; warns 

Wheeler at Cawnpore not to 
accept terms of surrender, 106 ; 
Lucknow and Sir Henry Law- 
rence, 148-184 ; character, 151, 
264 ; provisions the Residency, 
152, 263 ; mortally wounded, 
168 ; dying instructions, 169 ; 
death, 170 

Lawrence, John (Lord), 10 ; on 



the causes of the Mutiny, 14, 
20 ; on Christian missions, 18, 
53; the hero of Delhi, 265, 
300-301 ; characteristics, 266 ; 
Chief Commissioner of the 
Punjaub, 268 ; anticipates the 
Mutiny and disarms Sepoys, 
269 ; reinforces the besiegers at 
Delhi, 303, 304 

Lawrence, " Sam," 177 

Lecky, W. E. H., 14 

Leeson, Mrs., 82 et seq. 

Lester, General, 51 

Lincoln, Abi-aham, 151 

Lind, 73 

Lisburn parish church, 323 

Lockhart, 303 

Longfield, Brigadier, 307 

Loughnan, Lieutenant, 163, 234 

Lowe, Captain, 164 

Lucknow, 7, 9, 125 

and Sir Henry Lawrence, 

148-184 ; Residency, 148 ct 
seq., 349 et seq.; Chinhut 
disaster, 156 ; Residency de- 
fences, 162 ; number of the be- 
sieged, 165 ; strength of the 
besiegers, 167 ; the siege be- 
gins, 167; standing orders, 172 ; 
sorties, 172 ; the great assault 
of July 20th, 179 ; mines and 
countermines, 181 

and Havelock, 185-208; 

the relief force leaves Cawn- 
pore, 187 ; Havelock's second 
start from Cawnpore, 192 ; the 
Alumbagh carried, 195 ; Char- 
bagh bridge captured, 200 ; 
death of Neill, 204; Have- 
lock's column reaches the Re- 
sidency, 205 

and Sir Colin Campbell, 

209-236 ; Sir Colin Campbel 



380 



INDEX 



advances to the relief of Luck- 
now, 214 ; in communication 
with the garrison, 21S ; storm- 
ing the Secundrabagh, 220 ; 
slaughter of Sepoys in the 
Secundrabagh, 227 ; assault on 
the Shah Nujeef, 229 ; capture 
of the Mess-house, 233 ; the 
garrison relieved, 23-1 ; evacua- 
tion of the Residency, 235 ; 
losses of the garrison, 237 ; 
the retreat to Cawnpore, 240 ; 
survivors despatched to Alla- 
habad, 254 

Lucknow, the storming of, 345- 
371 ; Outram holds the Alum- 
bagh, 349-350; death of Hod- 
son, 360-3G2 ; the Kaisarbagh 
carried, 365-367 ; the fall of 
the city, 370 

Ludlow Castl'=', Delhi, 291 

Lugard, 351 

M'Bean, Lieutenant, 233, 358 

M'Carthy, Justin, " History of 
our own Times," 8 

M'Crae, 251 

M'Donald, Captain, 359 

M'Donough, 203 

Macdowell, Major, 338 et seq. 

Mackenzie, Colonel, 31, 32 

MacKillop, John (captain of the 
Cawnpore Well), 105, 106 

M'Manus, Private, 207, 208 

Macnab, Sir Donald, 824 

Madras, 71 

Mansfield, General, 261 

Mardan, 63, 294 

Margalla Pass, 324 

Martinere at Luckuow, 355 

Maude, Captain, at Allahabad, 
76 ; in the advance on Cawn- 
pore, 125 et scq. ; with the 



Lucknow relief column under 
Havelock, 192 it scq. ; "Me- 
mories of the Mutiny," 193 ; 
holding the Alumbagh, 350 

Meanmeer, 58 

Medley, Lieutenant, 305-307 

Meecham, 235 

Meerut, 7, 47, 287, 325 ; the 
revolt at, 23 ct seq. ; mutineers' 
flight to Delhi, 28 

Melbourne, 232 

Mess-house at Lucknow, 233, 
349 ct seq. 

Metcalfe, Sir T., 80 

Metcalfe House, Delhi, 291 

Mirza Aboo Eukir, 338 

— — Khejoo Sultan, 338 

. Mogul, 338 

Mogul, Palace of the, 331 

Montgomery, 58 

Moore, Captain, at the siege of 
Cawnpore, 97 et seq. ; organises 
a sally, 103 ; confers with the 
Nana's representatives, 108 ; 
death, 117 

Moore, Mr., 248 

Mootee Munzil, 232 

Moradabad, 48 

Moree Gate, Delhi, 316 

Mullahpore, 51 

Multan, 61, 62 

Mungul Pandy, 1 et scq. 

Mungulwagh, village, 193 

Murphy, Private, 117, 121 

Murray, Serg. -Major, 223 

Musabagh, at Lucknow, 368 

Mutchee Bhawan at Lucknow, 
160, 161 

Nadiree Regiment, 122 

Nana Sahib (Sureek Dhoondoo 
Punth) of Bithoor, 8 ; murder 
of refugees from Futteghur, 60 ; 



INDEX 



381 



receives charge of the Cawn- 
pore Treasury, 86 ; his ambition, 
92 ; persuades mutineers to re- 
turn to Cawnpore, 92 ; attacks 
Wheeler's entrenchments, 93 ; 
offers him terms for surrender, 
108 ; organises the Cawnpore 
massacre, 110; the massacre, 
114 et seq. ; defeated by Have- 
lock at Futtehpore, 128; routed 
at the battle of Cawnpore, 134 ; 
orders the murder of the cap- 
tives in the Beebeeghur, 139 ; 
a fugitive, 147 ; his palace at 
Bithoor destroyed by Have- 
lock, 191; with the Gwalior 
contingent, 244 ; fight with 
Windham, 245 ; defeated by 
Sir Colin Campbell, 261 

Napier of Magdala, Lord, 276 ; 
at the recapture of Lucknow, 
351, 360, 365 
' Naples, 332 

Napoleon Buonaparte, 271 

Neill, Genera], 363 ; at Allaha- 
bad with his " Lambs," 70 ; 
lands at Calcutta and advances 
to Benares, 72 ; punishes the 
mutineers, 74 ; advances to 
Allahabad, 75 ; retribution, 
77; vengeance at Cawnpore, 
146 ; holding Cawnpore, 185 ; 
the quarrel with Havelock, 
190 ; on the march to Luck- 
now, 192 et seq. ; death at the 
Kaisarbagh, 191, 204 

Nelson, Lord, 349 

Nepaulese contingent, 350 

Nicholas, Czar, 293 

Nicholson, John, 53-55, 265, 
268, 269, 349, 363 ; commands 
the Movable Column, 55 ; over- 
takes thc> 55th Native Infantry, 



63 ; at Delhi, 293 ; character. 
294 ; disperses the Sepoys at 
Mardan, 294 ; overtakes the 
mutineers at the Eords of Ravi, 
295; worship of " Nikkul- 
Seyn " by the natives, 296, 
324 ; defeats the Delhi army 
at Nutjutghur, 298 ; remini- 
scence of, 301-302 ; leading the 
stormers at Delhi, 310, 325; 
mortally wounded, 321, 322 ; 
death, 323 

Nicholson, 354 

Nikkal-Seynees, sect of, 296, 324 

Norman, 301 

, Captain, 234 

North Curtain at Lucknow, 163 

Nutjutghur, battle of, 297 

Olpherts, W., at Benares, 73 ; 
in Havelock's advance on 
Lucknow, 191, 192; at the 
capture of the Alumbagh, 
"Hell-fire Jack," 195; hold- 
ing the Alumbagh, 350 

Onao, village, 187 

Outram, Sir James, 125, 185, 
323 ; joins Havelock's column, 
191; wounded, 197; enters 
Lucknow, 205 ; in communica- 
tion with Sir Colin Campbell, 
214 ; meeting with Sir Colin 
Campbell, 233 ; at Havelock's 
funeral, 236 ; holds the Alum- 
bagh, 349-350 ; at the storming 
of Lucknow, 351 ct seq. 

Ovenden, 311 

Palmer, Colonel, 160, 163 

Pando, river, 245 

Pandoo Nuddee, riviikt, 130^ 138, 

143 
Panmure, Lord, 210 



382 



INDEX 



Paris, 353 

Paton, Sergeant John, 231 

Pattalia, Chief of, 9 

Paul, Sergeant, 364 

Pearl Palace at Lncknovv, 234 

Peel, William, 211 ; at the storm- 
ing of the Shah Nujeef, 229 ct 
seq. ; at Havelock's funeral, 
236 ; in the retreat to Cawn- 
pore, 253 ; at the battle of 
Cawnpore, 257 ; at the recap- 
ture of Lucknow, 353, 355 

Peshawur council of war, 53 ; gar- 
rison disarmed, 55 ; Lord Can- 
ning's decision to hold, 271-272 

Phillips, Ensign, 311 

Ponsonby, Brigadier, 73 et seq. 

Poonah, Peishwa of, 91 

Punjaub, 268 et seq., 297 

Quixote, Don, 151 

Raikes, 156, 296 

Rajpootana, 48 

Rampart Road, Delhi, 316 

Raneegange, 72 

Ravi, fords of, 295 

Raynor, Lieutenant, 41 

Redan at Lucknow, 163 

Reed, General, 271, 283, 287, 300 

Reegan, Private, 292 

Rees, 176, 177 

Reid, Major, on the Ridge at 

Delhi, 278-283 ; in the great 

assault on Delhi, 307, 317 ; 

wounded, 314 
Renaud, Major, 125, 128, 130 
Reveley, 39 
Rhine, river, 271 
Ridge at Delhi, 7, 9, 263-304 
Ripley, Colonel, 37 
Roberts, Earl, on the outbreak at 

Meerut, 33 ; at the council of 



war in Peshawur, 53 ; dis- 
arming the Sepoys, 56 ; at the 
storming of the Secundrabagh, 
223 et seq. ; with Sir Colin 
Campbell's relief force at Luck- 
now, 234; tlio retreat to Cawn- 
pore, 252 ; on the Ridge at 
Delhi, 274-292 ; reminiscences 
of Nicholson, 294, 301-302, 
322-23 ; in the great assault 
on Delhi, 308-327 ; in Delhi, 
the capture of the Lahore 
Gate, 329-30 ; at the taking of 
the King's Palace, 332 ; on the 
shooting of the princes, 341 ; 
in the recapture of Lucknow, 
351, 368 

Roberts, Major, 61 

Rohilcund, 48, 346 

Rose, Sir Hugh, 346 

Ross, drummer-boy, 233 

Rule, 362 

Russell (of the Times), 243, 352, 
353, 365 

Russell, 69 

Ryan, Private, 208 

Sabzi Mundi, Delhi, 330 
Sago's house, Lucknow, 164 
Salkeld, Lieutenant, 312, 313 
Saunders, Captain, 164 
Savada - house, Cawnpore, 116, 

122 
Scott, Major, 279, 303 
Scully, Conductor, 41 et seq. 
Sealkote, 295 
Seaton, Colonel, 285 
Secundrabagh, Lucknow, 214, 352, 

362 ; storming of the, 220 et 

seq.; slaughter of Sepoys in the, 

22Qet seq. 
Seetapore, 51 
Selingarh Fort, Delhi, 331 



INDEX 



383 



Seppings, Captain, 122 

Sewell, Lieutenant, 174 

Shah Jehanpore, 51 

Shah Nujeef, mosque, Lucknow, 

214, 362 ; the assault on the, 

229 ct seq. 
Shaw, Conductor, 41 et seq. 
Silver Bazaar, Delhi, 316, 330, 

336 
Simpson, Colonel, 65 et seq. 
Singh, Golab, 9 
Singh, Rajah Maun, 12 
Skinner, James, 315 
Smith, 39, 313 

Colonel, 59 

Colonel Baird, takes charge 

of the engineering operations at 

Delhi, 287, 301 ; insists on the 

necessity of holding Delhi after 

the assault, 327 

Major Percy, 354 

Speke, 319 

Spottiswoode, Colonel, 63 
Spurgin, Captain, 75 
Steel, Mrs., 294 
Stephenson, 130 
Stewart, Sergeant, 41 et seq. 
Stirling, 101 

Major, 125, 134, 251 

"Story of Two Noble Lives." the, 

287 
Sullivan, Private, 121 
Sutlej Campaign, 68 
Swat, hills of, 294 

Tantia Topee (the Nana's general), 
16, 371 ; organises the Cawn- 
pore massacre, 110; controls 
its execution, 113; narrow 
escape at the battle of Putteh- 
pore, 128 ; commands the Gwa- 
lior contingent, 239 ; attacks 
Windham at Cawnpore, 244 ; 



defeated by Sir Colin Campbell 
260 

Teeka Sing, 138 

Temple, Sir Richard, 9, 18 ; inter- 
views with the King of Delhi, 
337 

Terai, 51 

Thomason, 51 

Thomson, Mowbray, in the siege 
of Cawnpore, 100 et seq.; escapes 
the Cawnpore massacre, 117 ; 
wounded, 118 ; reaches British 
lines, 121 

Thornhill, 51, 139 

Times, the, 352 

Timour, the House of, 335, 342 

Tombs, Major, 283, 284, 289 

Travers, Major, 220 

Trevelyan, Sir George, 5, 12 ; liia 
" Cawnpore," 7, 84 et seq. 

Trotter, Captain, " Life of John 
Nicholson," 294, 295, 321 

Tucker, Commissioner, 73 

■ ■ Robert, 78 

Tulloch, 183 

Turner, Captain, 118 

Tyekhana at Lucknow, 178 

Tytler, Praser, assistant quarter- 
master-general to Havelock in 
the advance on Cawnpore, 125 ; 
with the Lucknow relief force, 
189,200; at Havelock'a funeral, 
236 

Tytler, 277 

Stanley Delhi Porce, 277 

Umballa, 44, 48, 53 ; the base 
for Delhi, 270, 303 ; council of 
war at, 273 

ViBAET, Colonel, interviews the 
King of Delhi, 19; "The Sepoy 
Mutiny," 37 ; in the massacre 



&p 



384 



g^ "7 / / /. 



INDEX 



C 

'90 



at the Cashmere Gate, Delhi, 
37-40 
Vibart, Major, holds the Redan 
at Cawnpore, 98 ; escapes to the 
boats, 112, 116; death, 119 

Wale, 350 

Walpole, K, with Windham at 
Cawnpore, 251 ; at the battle of 
Cawnpore, 255 ; at the recap- 
ture of Lucknow, 351 

Water Bastion at Delhi, 307, 311 

Webster, 200 

Wemyss, 319 

Weston, Captain, 163 

Wheeler, General Sir Hugh, his 
reassuring telegram to Calcutta 
as to the safety of Cawnpore, 
86 ; hands over the Treasury to 
the custody of Nana Sahib, 86 ; 
returns reinforcements to Luck- 
now, 88 ; bad choice of position 
for defence of Cawnpore, 8S-S9, 
263 ; the siege, 90-110; Sepoys 
attack his entrenchments, 93 ; 
death of his son, 105 ; appeals 
to Lawrence for help, 106 ; the 
Nana offers him terms for sur- 
render, 108 ; capitulation of 
the garrison arranged, 109 ; 
evacuates his entrenchments, 
111 ; his death in the massacre, 
lU 

Whiting, Captain, 109, 118 

Widdowson, Bridget, 102 

Wilberforce, R. G., " Unrecorded 



Chapter of the Indian Mutiny," 
80-82, 325-27 

Wilde, 831 

Willoughby, Lieutenant, defends 
and blows up the great maga- 
zine at Delhi, 38, 41 et seq., 
265, 328 

Wilson, Captain, 149 

■ Colonel, with Sir Henry 

Lawrence at Lucknow, 150, 153, 
167, 168 

General, 251 

General Archdale, 7 ; at 

Meerut, 30 ; assumes command 
on the Ridge at Delhi, 287 ; 
contemplates abandoning the 
siege of Delhi, 300-302 ; rein- 
forcements an-ive, 302-303; the 
great assault and capture of 
Delhi, 305-830 ; hesitates whe- 
ther to hold the city or not, 
825-27 ; spares the King's life, 
334 ; at the recapture of Luck- 
now, 351 

Windham, General, holds Cawn- 
pore, 239 ct seq.; engages Tantia 
Topee and the Gwalior contin- 
gent, 244 et seq. 

Wolseley, Lord, at the storming 
of the Shah Nujeef, 230 

Wood, 359 

Sir Evelyn, 211 

Wynne, 364 

YOUNGHUSBAND, 296 

Yule, Colonel, 284 



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